Greetings from the Isle of Skye!
After a long day and a half of travel we arrived safely (if a little sleep-deprived) at a cottage near the town of Staffin on the north end of the Isle of Skye. We got here well after dark and drove in seeing only what was illuminated by our headlights: a narrow road wide enough for a single car and the occasional sheep skittering into the darkness. Beyond that was black.
The morning light showed us what we’d missed. To the west a heather-covered moor sweeps up to high rocky bluffs, and to the east the mountains of the mainland rise above the sea. I’ve spent the past few days kicking myself for mailing my oil paints to France instead of taking them along here. (In my defense, I was warned that some of the chemicals in the paint might cause problems at airport security. Although the weather in Guantanamo Bay is generally a bit nicer than the chill and drizzle I associate with Scotland, they don’t have single-malt whisky there.)
Dad and Julian walked up the road to explore, and I followed a couple minutes behind. As I left the house I saw one of our neighbors out in his fields with a sheepdog, who was running circles around about twenty panicked looking sheep. “Git back! Git back! Git back here ye fockin’ idiot!”. (That’s a Gaelic translation of the opening lyrics of “Oh What a Beautiful Morning”.) As I continued on I came across an older man walking in the other direction. I wished him a good morning and he introduced himself as Calum Gillis. “Are ye with them?” he asked me, gesturing up the road at Julian and Dad.
“Yes, that’s my father and brother.”
“He was talkin’ Gaelic to me!”
Scottish Gaelic is the native language here, but for many years it was looked down on as backwards and primitive. Schools taught in English only, and the number of Gaelic speakers in Scotland went into steep decline. One critic of the language wrote that the necessities for speaking Gaelic are an alcohol problem and a dislocated jaw. Despite having neither, Julian is trying to learn it. He’s been teaching himself with the aid of an online dictionary, just a small part of a revival of the language. Many street signs are written in both English and Gaelic, and schools have reversed course with regards to the language. For example, the elementary school in Staffin is taught primarily in Gaelic, with some English on the side. As someone who’d grown up speaking Gaelic, Calum was overjoyed to find Julian – a young American – taking such an interest in the language.
Calum promised to stop by the next evening for tea, and our family set out to explore the island. We started out with a brief hike up Bioda Buidhe, a series of dramatic bluffs and cliffs that look out over Staffin and the ocean below.
From there we drove down to the Cuillin Hills on the south end of the island. Even the two-lane roads are very narrow, and many roads are only a single lane with turnouts ever fifty yards or so to allow passing. But you can drive for miles without encountering anybody except for sheep grazing along the side of the road. They are very skittish around people but don’t seem to mind cars, apparently oblivious to the relationship between the two.
The houses on Skye are small and compact, almost all of them with white stucco walls and slate roofs. Beautiful in their simplicity, they provide a sharp contrast with the dark greens, browns, and purples of the moors. The purple heather is especially noticeable along the ruins of old stone walls, many of which are now completely engulfed.
But where the stones are visible I’ve been very impressed with the workmanship of these walls. They are high and broad, with the stones packed carefully to make a smooth edge. The people who built them had plenty of practice – some of these walls run for hundreds of yards across the moors. And the stonework isn’t limited to walls alone. There are few trees on Skye aside from those planted recently for lumber plantations, so until very recently stones were the only widely available building resource. We passed by numerous ruins of old crofters’ huts, now packed with bracken and heather that is broken by the occasional sheep path that enters through what once was a door and leaves through what once was a window.
The lack of trees has also forced islanders to heat their homes using dried slabs of peat, which they cut out of the moors. This isn’t relegated to the past either – Calum told us that most of his heat comes from peat.
We had Calum over for tea last night and he invited us to come by this morning and watch as he, his son Donald, and his grandson Ryan rounded up lambs to take to the market in Portree. We arrived as the three of them crested a hill behind a flock of several dozen sheep being kept in line by a year-old sheepdog named Glenn. Glenn dashed in circles around the sheep, head low to the ground, guiding the flock into an old stone enclosure where the lambs would be separated fromt the ewes and trucked to market in Portree on Monday.
After they’d locked up the sheep they came over to us and we talked about everything from from the market for wool (barely worth what it costs to shear them – these sheep are raised for meat) to training sheepdogs. Donald told us that Glenn was a natural at the job and had been trying to herd sheep since he was no bigger than a cat. Glenn, who was tied up nearby, was constantly up on his hind legs whining and peering into the sheep pen. I felt a bit of the same pull myself as the smells and sounds of their flock brought me back to wrestling Suffolk sheep back in New Hampshire.
Calum, Donald, and Ryan were very friendly and were happy to talk. I’m glad that Julian made that initial connection with them – it’s allowed us to get a richer glimpse of life on the island. At times it can feel awkward to be so visibly a tourist in somebody else’s home, but just as I’m feeling guilty about taking a photograph of somebody’s stone wall I’ll be passed by a tour bus emblazoned with the words “Wild & Sexy Haggis Adventures”. I suppose I could be worse.
The Gillis family seemed to agree. Calum asked us if we’d be stopping by Portree on Monday to see the market. Sadly, by that time we’ll be on the other side of Scotland. Tomorrow we make the long drive across the country to St. Andrews, where we’ll finally get to see the seaside town where Julian will start in just a few weeks!