It’s about a voyage. Well, no, it isn’t, it’s about an arrival. It’s about sailing up close to an island off an island, out from another island in the Uists. The Sound of Flodday. You know Fraoch a Ronaigh? An exile’s song, remembering the place names, the features on the landscape of that group of islands. Mapping them by moving the melody from one place name to the other. This is one of several Gaelic songs used to strong effect in a film. No, I don’t mean Talitha Mackenzie’s voice in Zena, The Warrior Princess. I’m thinking about a low-budget and very strange Scottish film with gory bits but without much of the blockbuster effect. Some very good performances though and of course excellent scenery. But I can’t remember the name of it, the director, or the names of the actors. That’s why documentation is important. Memory is suspect.
Tante Erika was being navigated by Gabriele and me after dropping the offspring off in Lochmaddy. Anna had signed up for a week’s drama workshop in the studio theatre in Benpeculiar. We sailed out of the loch in moderate to poor visibility and met dense fog. It clung to us so we sailed blind up to the entrance to the loch, referring to a hand-held GPS in the cockpit. I don’t think I would have trusted Decca that far.
We said we’d only go in there if we had a hundred metres visibility. The Yanks could decide to go to war and flick the switch on all the satellites. Maybe fifty would do. Metres, not satellites. It’s one of several anchorages known as Acarsaid Fhallaidh – a hidden place. There’s a gap between rocks and you don’t see it till you’re up to it. The way you’d think to go – that’s not navigable – rocks everywhere, just under the surface. But the narrow way has enough depth any state of tide and no obstructions. Like a parable.
The Uist boys had told me not to worry even if the pilot book is a bit guarded. You’ll be fine. We were. We went in to find good holding in stiff mud. And then we looked around. The fog was moving. A tumbling burn appeared on the lit shoulder of a hill. And there he was.
Another of our icons. A proud and independent head. I couldn’t count how many points. Just call it a fine tall head on a hefty stag.
I think I told you I had to boil a head like that once, though not as fine as the live one we were observing. I had to chop the wood from old furniture and decayed roofs of outhouses. Once you got it to the boil, it wasn’t so bad to keep it going. I could get on with weeding the radishes and Webbs Curlies. But I’d to keep going back to keep the water boiling so the fur and meat fell off the skull. It wasn’t that much of a rest for my foot. I’d have been as well on the hill.
The romanticism of the sight before us, made me think of Scott. I’d brought Waverley along on this trip. I wanted to decide for myself if the superstar author of the day had indeed taken a romantic line on the tragedy of the ’45 rebellion.
You could argue he invented the historical novel. First, he composed long, rhythmic poems that sent hundreds of people, rich enough to travel, out from their drawing rooms to the Trossachs.
He was also the guy quoted by a landscape consultant, employed by one of the world’s largest suppliers of aggregates, to prove that blasting away a whole small mountain on the east coast of Harris would be no great loss to the world. He maybe saw it on a poor day. Our mist is kind of wet when you’re walking or sailing in it, rather than looking out from a castle window.
We had just navigated down the indented east coast of North Harris. That’s Gabriele and me. Sir Walter wasn’t really with us. We’d explored an inlet or two, tight channels between reefs, taking you into good pools under these grey hills. One navigator’s log could say ‘impressive’ and another ‘intimidating’ when you were looking at the same geological faultline. A high fold, formed by extreme heat.
The same observations are open to conflicting interpretation. Take the Crusades. These reformed Viking raiders, settled in fertile Orkney. Some of them were converted and spent some of the great wealth they’d gained, from the taken lands, on expeditions to the Holy Land. So they saved their souls. Or they caused havoc on land as they had on sea. Depending on your standpoint.
I was getting the feeling that Scott was inevitably and profitably (in more ways than one) caught between the classical liking for order and an attraction to mountain chasms. There’s quite a tendency for some of his characters to leap over them. The chasms, I mean, not the classical buildings. He was simply having a classical day when he witnessed the east side of Harris. Roineabhal was under dense cloud and all these complex shades of grey were lost on him. On that occasion. Next day it could have been different.
If we look to science we may learn that the suggestion of east Harris being reminiscent of a lunar landscape has a sure foundation. Although Lewisian gneiss prevails, Roineabhal itself is composed of anorthosite – hence the proposal to remove it and use it for making motorways. This is in fact a predominant rock in the samples gained from the Apollo expeditions. Trust me, I’m telling you a story.
To take it a bit further, let’s look to the arts. Can I inform you, if you don’t know already, that Stanley Kubrick composed his shots depicting the landscape of Jupiter, in 2001, A Space Odyssey, from that of Harris?
A man made a fortune and made himself bankrupt in building his dream castle in stone. (But probably not anorthosite.) The same man produced dialogue which printed the voice of less privileged characters with respect and fidelity to their Scots voices. Not just for colour.
The easts and wests of islands. My olman had a foot in both camps. So he could see how all that luxuriance of machair and storm beaches on our wild west side needs the more plain heaps of lunar boulders that comprise the east side of Harris. The bursts of colour shining from that grey can be intense. Like the bright maroon garnets you’ll sometimes find in the rocks. I was maybe beginning to understand a bit more of what the olman wove into that cloth, the stuff he made when the markets were fickle.
Let’s not forget the west side’s rugged shores are savage to a mariner’s eye. Mangersta is brutal. And the Barvas navigators would only take the risk if there was documentary evidence that a fishing was to be had. Think of all these boulders strewn across the alkaline green strip back from the surf-line. The power that drove them there. And then there’s Arnol, the murder-village. All these stones that were an asset if you were building dykes and blackhouses. But my olman would still tease our Siarach relations. Aye, he said, the good lord must have been cutting it fine on the Saturday night. The Sabbath was fast approaching so he gathered all the rubble left after making the world and dumped the lot at Arnol.
Strange how the bristling tension that seems to have become a background hum to your relationship, in place of passion, can ease without warning. The strain came off Gabriele aboard Tante Erika. Even after our daughter left the ship, we were easy together, most of that trip.
I was beginning to think I could get used to the way speed is bound to vary when you’re indulging in this sailing carry-on. One or two days we even achieved a better average than the rebuilt Yanmar could give, without busting a gut and devouring diesel. I knew we could keep things secure for at least a bit longer. You just have to take it from one tide to another.