Seasons on Harris (44 page)

Shiantscape

And there he was. His boat was on time, ready and waiting, my carefully purchased boxes of supplies were lined up neatly on the dock along with four heavy bags of coal (“You'd be amazed how much coal gets used up in that chilly little shack,” Adam had told me), and I was standing there expectantly clutching a rather sad little farewell card from Anne. There had been another family emergency and she'd returned once again to Yorkshire. “Take care, and make sure you have a life jacket…and don't do anything daft!” she'd written, fully aware of one of those minor glitches that had almost led to the cancellation of the entire venture. It could have been worse, but on one of my rambles across the pernicious, heather-clad slopes of the moor above our cottage, I'd managed to lock my ankle in a tight cleft between two invisible rocks and, if the pain was anything to go by, almost tore it off.

“Nothing torn,” the doctor in Tarbert had assured me, “however try not to walk around on it too much for a while…”

“But I'm off to the Shiants for a couple of days with some friends,” I said. “And there'll be quite a bit of walking and climbing involved.”

“Ah, the Shiants—I've always wanted to go out there,” he'd mused. “Well—who's doing the cooking?”

“I've no idea,” I said.

“So—why don't you let your friends do the walking and whatnot and you stay and look after the meals?”

“That's not quite what I had in mind.”

“No, I'm sure it's not, but I'm assuming you'd actually like the use of your ankle back sometime in the foreseeable future.”

“That bad, eh?”

“It will be if you don't watch it!”

So watch it I did, wrapping the poor bruised and swollen appendage in an elastic bandage and cramming it into a near-bursting boot. And there I stood on the dock as Angus made his final preparations for the voyage, suddenly realizing that time was slipping by and there was still only me at the appointed meeting place.

Surely not another glitch, I thought. The worse one of all. Angus ready, boat ready, supplies ready—but no Adam!

Suddenly a cheerful shout echoed along the harbor—“There you
are, you old…”—and I turned to see this tall, long-faced, aristocratic-looking individual, dressed in a navy pea jacket and laughing gleefully between huge teeth, giant-striding along the dock, arms outstretched, face aglow with good fellowship.

And despite the fact that we were only e-mail colleagues, we greeted each other like long-lost friends. Angus laughed as he started to load the supplies onto the boat. And then laughed even louder at the sight of Harry, Adam's longtime photographer-friend, lugging his enormous, antique-looking square box camera and tripod toward us. Harry's relatively modest height made it appear he was being attacked by his massive contraption. But he seemed happy enough and reminded me immediately of Kenneth Branagh in his
Henry V
role, with his wild red hair, a face full of mischief and mirth, and a voice with that distinct Branagh burr.

“So you're not into digital, then, Harry?” was, I think, my first comment.

Harry gave a rich, throaty laugh. “Oh no, this creature does just fine f'me—I like 'em big an' a real handful!”

“Don't we all!” muttered Adam suggestively.

“Okay, gentlemen,” shouted Angus. “Boarding time!”

Within minutes
Interceptor 42
gave its familiar throaty roar and Tarbert vanished in a frothy rainbowed spume.

“Angus doesn't mess around, does he?” grinned Harry, his Irish-red hair flailing. Definitely Henry V.

We were soon out of the narrow channel between Harris and Scalpay and roaring across the open Minch. Watch out, Blue Men, I thought, you'll not catch us today in this boat. And there, ten or so miles to our east, lay the bulky, whale-backed profiles of the Shiants bathed in warm morning sunshine. I'd hoped for fine weather but this was way beyond expectations. Not a single cloud broke the purity of the great blue dome above us.

“Great stuff!” shouted Adam as spray rolled down his long nose. “Angus, could you do a circuit of the islands, I want David and Harry to see the cliffs on the east side.”

“Already planned on that,” Angus shouted back from the wheel. “It's been a long while since I've seen 'em too.”

And what a sight they were. We made the crossing in less than half an hour. I'd never seen The Minch as calm and benevolent as this before. And as we slowed to edge our way along a dragon's-back series of sharp-profile islets, the
Galtachan
, a bizarre prelude to the Shiants (Adam describes them as “the knobbled spine of a half-submerged creature”), the soaring basalt cliffs of the first of the two main islands, Garbh Eilean, came into view. Almost a match for the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland or Fingal's Cave on Staffa, thousands of hexagonal basalt columns rose together like organ pipes more than five hundred feet into the crystal-clear air. Adam refers to this half-mile-long “curtain of columns” as “the heroic heart of the Shiants,” and it is virtually continuous along the northern shore except for the enticing natural arch punched through by the ceaseless pounding of the waves at the northeastern corner of the island.

Despite the appearance of great age and endurance, this almost perfect example of intrusive magma forcing its way to the surface from deep in the Earth's core is less than 60 million years old. Compared to the staggering age of Harris's 3.5-billion-year-old bedrock, this event occurred a few nanoseconds ago in geological time. But it was nevertheless an event of cataclysmic proportions—a vast upwelling of 1,200ºC magma along a tectonic plate rift that stretched from Greenland through Iceland, the Faeroes, and the Scottish isles to the tortured black granite of Lundy Island in England's Bristol Channel, encompassing in its explosive outpourings Staffa and Antrim's Giant's Causeway.

And, just as on St. Kilda, a panoply of seabirds here of a dozen or more different species whirled and dived and spun slowly on the thermals and perched on ledges like little platoons of black-and-white-clad soldiers on parade. And once again there seemed to be no panic, no protest over our presence in their self-contained world of flight—just a kind of blithe acceptance with maybe a touch of curiosity, particularly on the part of the shags and puffins.

I had the impression that this may have been a first-time experience for Harry as he stood at the rail, mesmerized. Adam smiled and eased up beside us.

“Fantastic, isn't it,” he murmured.

“Utterly unbelievable,” said Harry.

“I had no idea…,” I said, mouth open in awe.

“Ah, but I should bring you here in the height of summer when the flocks are at their fullest. You can barely see the sky for wings…”

Harry nodded and smiled, more than content with today's aerial wonderworld. But as he was such an avid photographer, I was surprised he wasn't using a smaller camera to capture the scene. There was obviously no chance, with the wallowing of Angus's boat, of dragging out his mammoth box. However, he seemed happy just to stand, watch, and grin his endearing grin at whatever this season offered to show him.

I always remember Adam's emotive—but perceptive—description of his seasonal experiences here. It was one of those passages that first drew me to his book:

We eased on southward down the cliffs of Garbh Eilean, then passed the narrow, boulder-strewn spit of land across to the second island of Eilean an Tighe with its own magnificent contingent of soaring basalt column cliff and bird colonies. We got a brief glimpse of Adam's cottage, nestled above the beach and the landing spot on the west side. To the east rose the bold profile of a third island—Eilean Mhuire—which Adam described
to us as “a vast guillemot colony in the summer and amazingly rich in remnants of settlements, but we're not sure of their age because they were built mainly of turf. There's not much available stone over there. And it must have been a hard place to live—there's no real protection against the Minch winter gales. Definitely brass monkey territory out there!”

Puffin

Despite his age and sophistication, Adam seemed to possess an endearingly boyish nature—rich in giggles and guffaws and always ready to spot Monty Pythonesque situations zinging with zany ironic humor.

We rounded the southern tip of the Eilean an Tighe—appropriately named House Island—and headed north toward the cottage. But suddenly, as we stood by the rail, looking for an anchoring spot to launch the dinghy for the transfer to our new home, Adam's face lost its youthful appearance.

“Something's wrong,” he gasped. “Very wrong.”

Harry and I looked at him and then at the shore. Everything appeared fine to us. The little whitewashed cottage sat prim and perky above the rock-strewn beach, its bright scarlet roof gleaming in the noon sun. The two chimneys were intact and the grasses around the cottage had been cropped to a velvety fuzz by the ever-avaricious sheep.

“It's incredible!” Adam half-shouted. “The land's been ripped away…at least forty feet in front of the house has gone. And what the heck are those bloody great boulders doing around the door…and what's the door doing open?!”

Angus came out from the galley and stared along with him.

“Ah, right—looks like y'got the storm, Adam…terrible four days…near hurricane conditions a while back. Huge tidal surges—almost tsunamis! Made a real mess of things…the trees at Lews Castle were decimated…power was out for ages, roofs ripped open…even some people killed down in the Uists.”

Adam didn't—couldn't—respond. He just kept staring at the unfamiliar landscape of the new beach with swathes of strata and rocks freshly exposed to the elements. He remained silent as we loaded the supplies on the dinghy and motored across to the shore. Then he scampered ahead and rushed into the cottage. We could hear his cry of outrage: “Good God—what a bloody mess!”

And it was indeed a bloody mess. We could now clearly see the tide-wrack line marking the high point of the surge. It had reached at least halfway up the cottage walls, smashing in the door, churning bunk beds, tables, chairs, lamps, pots, pans, and anything else moveable and leaving them in chaotic piles against the far walls of the two tiny rooms.

“No problem…,” said the gallant Harry, with a half-convincing smile. “We'll have it all back together in no time.”

Adam nodded, but his eyes were blank as if in a stupor. However, Harry was right. After Angus had helped us unload the supplies and set off back to Harris, we got to work, sweeping, cleaning, replacing the furniture, and lighting a roaring fire to try to dispel the damp, musty, rotten-seaweed smell that permeated the place.

“Cup a tea?” asked the ever-cheerful Harry.

“The heck with tea. Get the Scotch out,” said Adam.

We compromised and enjoyed both. And in less than an hour we had not only transformed the place into a reasonably comfortable living space but also rebuilt the wrecked iron-railing sheep fank at the side of the cottage.

“What about these boulders?” I asked Adam, pointing to four enormous basalt monoliths that the tsunami-like tidal surge had dumped haphazardly around the front of the cottage.

“Leave 'em. They're our souvenirs…can you imagine the strength of that storm to move things as big as this so easily—and so far!”

“They deserve a photograph.” Harry laughed as he set about preparing his monstrous contraption.

“Doesn't it come with one of those shelves for a magnesium flash?” I asked facetiously.

Harry ignored me, as indeed he should have.

Adam laughed. “And surely you're going to vanish under a black shroud or something…”

Harry ignored him too and labored on, trying to ensure his tripod, almost as large as himself, was suitably level.

The tea, the Scotch, the revived humor, and the warm sun eventually restored our collective mood. We'd done a good job of making the place habitable, although Adam decided he'd erect his own pup tent well away from the battered cottage.