Shetland, Scotland
Our sun traces an arc across the sky. If we were to bisect its transit, to mark its peak, the curving line on either side would be a mirror image of itself. Our day was much like that. A pattern could be constructed from the morning’s themes. Inverted it became a template for the afternoon; clouds, wind, the avian world, evidence of ancient peoples, agriculture, town = shopping, domesticated animals, archaeological sites, nesting birds, blustery weather, fog.
Long exposed obsidian has a milky skin. As we awoke the seas were weathered obsidian. We could see into its dark depths but the surface shone with an opaque sheen. Above the sky was washed with all the colors of smoke. Lines of gannets skimmed the surface, their brilliant white plumage seeming to radiate a light from within. Rafts of guillemots were sprinkled like pepper across the waves. Even in the channel between Mainland, Shetland and tiny Mousa Island the wind blew strong. As the anchor slipped beneath te water, it appeared to release an imprisoned sun and blue skies appeared above. The island, covered in an emerald carpet, invited us to explore. Man had lived here once but now the birds held their domain. Every steep faced cliff or crevice in a rocky wall was occupied by nesting fulmars or shags. In the grassy meadows battles were waged between arctic terns and arctic skuas, the latter brilliant aerialists with a kleptoparasitic tendency. Tiny plovers skittered from their spotted unprotected eggs. Well camouflaged female eiders sat motionless on nests lined with the softest of down. From the hilltops aristocratic great skuas looked down upon the lot. On the western shore, gray seals mimicked rocks, their tiny forelimbs pulled against their chests and their hind flippers curved upwards like the smile of the Cheshire cat.
Humans had left an impressive legacy here. Toiling they had lifted sandstone slabs, one by one and placed them higher and higher in perfect symmetry to construct a protective fortress, the ancient broch which still stands forty feet tall on the rocky shoreline. More recently too families had lived there but now only the empty walls of a manor house and cottages remain, their only inhabitants the wandering sheep.
We docked in Lerwick, Mainland, Shetland midday. The streets and shops were filled with friends, both those who were traveling with us and the local folk. But the word Shetland kept conjuring up images of tiny ponies and we had yet to discover these. No where could one go on this largest of the islands in this archipelago and be more than three miles from the sea. No where could one go except in the heart of town and be away from the heart of the economy, the farms. Tiny lambs gamboled behind their mothers. Cattle, freed at last from their winter quarters, lazily chewed their cud. Shy month old foals of the famous Shetland breed feared to stray far from their mother’s protective flanks. At Jarlshof, we walked from the Bronze-Age past to an Iron-Age roundhouse, a Viking settlement and a seventeenth century estate in only a few hundred yards, the entire span of time hard to comprehend.
At the far southern tip of the island stands Sumburgh Head, crowned by a Stevenson lighthouse. We climbed to its highest heights as the wind whistled a loud melody. Below the cliffs dropped straight to the sea and in every crevice, nook and corner nesting fulmars communed. Puffins disappeared into hidden burrows. Sharply angled islets, fragments of cliff broken off long ago, were the roosts for thousands of guillemots and razorbills, all aligned with their backs to the wind. Waves crashed and churned stirring the water’s surface into a creamy froth where a gray seal periodically showed its head. As the chill inched through our clothes and the skies once again moved from charcoal to a masking mist, the gannets soared below.
Our sun traces an arc across the sky. If we were to bisect its transit, to mark its peak, the curving line on either side would be a mirror image of itself. Our day was much like that. A pattern could be constructed from the morning’s themes. Inverted it became a template for the afternoon; clouds, wind, the avian world, evidence of ancient peoples, agriculture, town = shopping, domesticated animals, archaeological sites, nesting birds, blustery weather, fog.
Long exposed obsidian has a milky skin. As we awoke the seas were weathered obsidian. We could see into its dark depths but the surface shone with an opaque sheen. Above the sky was washed with all the colors of smoke. Lines of gannets skimmed the surface, their brilliant white plumage seeming to radiate a light from within. Rafts of guillemots were sprinkled like pepper across the waves. Even in the channel between Mainland, Shetland and tiny Mousa Island the wind blew strong. As the anchor slipped beneath te water, it appeared to release an imprisoned sun and blue skies appeared above. The island, covered in an emerald carpet, invited us to explore. Man had lived here once but now the birds held their domain. Every steep faced cliff or crevice in a rocky wall was occupied by nesting fulmars or shags. In the grassy meadows battles were waged between arctic terns and arctic skuas, the latter brilliant aerialists with a kleptoparasitic tendency. Tiny plovers skittered from their spotted unprotected eggs. Well camouflaged female eiders sat motionless on nests lined with the softest of down. From the hilltops aristocratic great skuas looked down upon the lot. On the western shore, gray seals mimicked rocks, their tiny forelimbs pulled against their chests and their hind flippers curved upwards like the smile of the Cheshire cat.
Humans had left an impressive legacy here. Toiling they had lifted sandstone slabs, one by one and placed them higher and higher in perfect symmetry to construct a protective fortress, the ancient broch which still stands forty feet tall on the rocky shoreline. More recently too families had lived there but now only the empty walls of a manor house and cottages remain, their only inhabitants the wandering sheep.
We docked in Lerwick, Mainland, Shetland midday. The streets and shops were filled with friends, both those who were traveling with us and the local folk. But the word Shetland kept conjuring up images of tiny ponies and we had yet to discover these. No where could one go on this largest of the islands in this archipelago and be more than three miles from the sea. No where could one go except in the heart of town and be away from the heart of the economy, the farms. Tiny lambs gamboled behind their mothers. Cattle, freed at last from their winter quarters, lazily chewed their cud. Shy month old foals of the famous Shetland breed feared to stray far from their mother’s protective flanks. At Jarlshof, we walked from the Bronze-Age past to an Iron-Age roundhouse, a Viking settlement and a seventeenth century estate in only a few hundred yards, the entire span of time hard to comprehend.
At the far southern tip of the island stands Sumburgh Head, crowned by a Stevenson lighthouse. We climbed to its highest heights as the wind whistled a loud melody. Below the cliffs dropped straight to the sea and in every crevice, nook and corner nesting fulmars communed. Puffins disappeared into hidden burrows. Sharply angled islets, fragments of cliff broken off long ago, were the roosts for thousands of guillemots and razorbills, all aligned with their backs to the wind. Waves crashed and churned stirring the water’s surface into a creamy froth where a gray seal periodically showed its head. As the chill inched through our clothes and the skies once again moved from charcoal to a masking mist, the gannets soared below.
