Sealed Island

        

  Untamed, savage, desolate - I have wandered through many places since early childhood, but I still think of the wilderness as a place in my head.  Anywhere that is difficult to reach, rugged, self-sufficient - even intoxicating.

 

  Roads despoil the wilderness, even the ones that wind benignly across moorland, where most people come to sit and stare, and never wander off the path.

 

  In a quiet place, every bird flight is an event.  On Erraid, the red kite comes by shyly, and even the seagulls are mute,  gliding overhead like extras in a silent movie. They must lead lives of
quiet meditation, I muse, as I see them bank and drift over the sand, before coming down for a gentle splash.  This is where I want to stay, I think. This landscape is accepting, unjudging - it is replete with relaxation.

 

    The Island of Erraid, where David Balfour finds himself stranded in the novel
`Kidnapped', is only one mile square, but it takes four hours to walk around its shoreline.  Everywhere there are hazards - unending bog-land, paths that disappear into nothing, rock formations that snare your interest, then make you feel you will never get down from them whole.

 

   I wondered what can make such an island so isolated, just four or so miles from the village of Fionnhport. The journey involves a rough sandy track, a slippery semi-submerged jetty and finally, a five minute boat journey across the water.

 

  The answer lies there in those deceptively simple hardships - the perils of the slimy seaweed as you get in and out of the rowing-boat. The cold, wet water lashing your fingers, the wind battering your face. The whimsical, tormenting tides, which may leave a patch of sand where you can traverse the whole strait on foot, if you dare.  And then there is the knowledge that you could even make news going to fetch a newspaper.

 

  You could go the way of the hare on this island, which is what almost happened to Robert Louis Stevenson's young Davy Balfour, maddened by his lack of local knowledge, and unaware of the
secret pathway between the tides. Hares love the bracken, and so does the wily fox.  I watched one of each, one evening, mentally replaying the Tales of Brer Rabbit in my head -  but I was determined to see the sunny side of this rocky outcrop, with its beautiful view over three more mysterious islands, which jut out of the Irish sea like giant green dumplings.

 

  When the wind whips up, even small distances seem interminable and  arduous.  Here, the light changes so quickly that you can never just sit and capture the view, which is both frustrating and strangely satisfying.  Every photograph is an adventure; every colour a new revelation.

 

  The landscape hypnotizes you until you lose any sense of having a separate identity.  When I slipped and fell in the bracken climbing down one of the island's hills, I felt more and more
free, and then almost light-headed. I was suddenly a part of the scenery, not just another grimy urchin having a lie-down in the grass.

 

  Climbing another hill, which was partially cordoned off to protect it from the sheep, I found bright yellow Saint John's Wort for the first ever time;  then pretty little flowers like red Germander Speedwell, which took my breath away;  then bog-myrtle, with a mysterious smell, like eucalyptus trees, whose aroma was everywhere.

 

  The prize for the longest walk came for clambering over hundreds of rocks to reach another hilly path.  We ascended to a viewing-point above Seal Bay. And when I finally distinguished a grey seal from a clump of rocks, I thought I had mastered the art of the chameleon.

 

  Being invisible to the naked eye gives you a feeling of triumph, even hidden behind two rocks by the side of a path, hoping that no-one will disturb you in your private hideaway.  To feel protected by this landscape, you must be either too small or too insignificant to be picked out by a passing eye.

 

  Here I lay, scratched by heather and scorching in the sun, but staying still long enough to notice the subtle movements of basking marine mammals. More gradually came to life, barking strangely to each other like aquatic labradors. And here I was, party to the hidden identities of a wilderness which was bounded only by the limits of my imagination. A stone is never just a stone.
 

Reviews

[John B. Bolling]

Very interesting. The vocabulary used is precise and eloquent. It is well-articulated and free of fluff. The last sentence is marvelous, but is it ever possible that a stone is simply a stone, nothing more? Is it simply our own understanding of science, theology, and philosophy that enables the statement "a stone is never just a stone" to be true?