A fork in the road

Sometimes life sneaks up behind you and gives you a good whack upside the head - and sends you off down a fork in the road that you'd rather not be on. Obviously I haven't written a post for a long time. This is because at the end of November - after my last post - my dear fiber-obsessed daughter was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer and all of a sudden nothing else seemed important. I've been busy going along for tests, surgeries and doctor appointments and will continue to share with her whatever is to come. The road ahead is shaded - destination unknown - but travel it we must. Eileen has a blog on blogspot called "Looking at the world through rose-colored cancer" if you wish to follow the journey. It's not a pleasure trip.

But back to happier paths and past meanderings.

Klondykers

Summer was drawing to a close and autumn was coming on - the end of our first year in Coigach. Time again for the last dipping before the fall sheep sales in Dingwall. The young ewe lambs were taken back out to the islands and the government issue rams were ready to be brought into the parks to start the sheep cycle over again.

And it was time for the annual influx of the Klondykers - large factory ships from all over Europe who would come every year to anchor in Loch Broom and buy fish that they would process right there on the boats. Other large fishing boats would come into Loch Broom and the Minche to net and dredge and sell their catch to the factory ships. This could pose a problem for local fishermen who would sometimes have their prawn fleets dragged and damaged by the bigger boats. There were a lot of complaints about the dredgers because the locals thought they dug up and ruined the bottom - damage that could take years to repair itself. We could see the results of overfishing - population declines of herring and mackerel were obvious even in the short time we were there. And the advent of the EU with its regulations putting the Scottish fisheries at a disadvantage has made it even harder for local fisherman to make a go of it.

Russian and East German ships would lie at anchor for weeks but not let their men off the boats - just in case they'd decide not to come back. There was one East German captain that did come ashore, caught a bus to Inverness and then a ship to West Germany - his way to get across the wall. However, there was one Eastern European gang that was allowed to come into town - the Bulgarians evidently weren't unhappy with their lot and could be trusted to return to the boat. We were in the Ceilidh Place one night for dinner when about 10 Bulgarians decended on the place - all square, mustachioed, dressed in black leather and looking like trouble. But they sat and talked quietly like gentlemen - then went off to the stores to buy them out of coffee, nylons, and other stuff hard to get in the East.

From our front windows we could see the boats anchored in Loch Broom - they were all lit up at night and looked like a floating city. It was really quite pretty and made the scene festive while they were anchored there.

Music and friends

Throughout the summer and for the rest of our stay in Scotland we were incredibly lucky to meet many wonderful musicians who became close friends and made our lives joyful. They came with their families and friends to stay with us and play in the pubs and village hall - and we stayed with them on their home ground and went to concerts and pub sessions and generally had a great time.

Wendy Stewart and Alan James came with harp, concertina, whistle and guitar. I'll always remember one particular morning sitting in the sun outside Castlehill listening to the two of them play and gazing out at the islands and the sea - and when the wind blew it would play its own fairy music on the harp strings. It was magical!

Jimmy and Ruth Philp would come with their kids from the east coast, sometimes alone and sometimes with friends who, along with Pete Taylor (our local musical phenomenon), had a band that played gigs together around the area. Each had their signature songs - called for over and over again on ceilidh nights. And as the whisky went around we would lapse into old gospel songs or just plain silly stuff. We made a wonderful tape called "The Last Castlehill Ceilidh" which has some great music recorded at our house - and some incredibly awful but very funny attempts - obviously recorded very late in the evening.

Dik Banovich, who sang Fats Waller-type songs and played a mean jazz guitar, came with his friend Tiny (who was way over 6 feet tall - must have been imposing in a kilt) - to visit us when they were in between busking forays on the Continent. We had a great trip with them to a music festival and highland games weekend on Skye. This was when we were introduced to the dreaded call by those well-oiled folks in any pub audience who always called out - ad nauseum - "Play 'Flower of Scotland'". Cringe. But Dick always handled it very well and patiently - and actually - I like the song.

And so they filled our home with music - flute, recorder, harp, squeezebox, bodhran, mandolin, guitar, pennywhistle, violin - and always singing. What could be better?

Click go the shears, boys...

The best of the summer days were spent at the shearing. Jack was originally a Chicago boy, used to ethnic restaurants, concerts, theater, some of the best museums in the world - a city lad through and through. He'd never known the soft contours and sharp edges of something as foreign to his experience as a real sheep. But he fell in love with a pair of shears and the smell of warm wool and the company of men in touch with the earth. So he learned to clip a fleece with the hand blades - and over the course of the next 3 summers became a creditable shearer.

He apprenticed himself to Alisdair West, who was a model of patience and forbearance as Jack went through the first, sometimes disasterous, ascent of the learning curve. He was bloodied when his shears were driven into his arm by a poorly tied ewe, causing an emergency trip to the village nurse who kindly bound up his wounds. He was embarrassed when the ewe he was clipping escaped and went dancing over the hill trailing a veil of half-sheared fleece behind her. Once, while he was taking so long to clip one of those first sheep, one of the other men came over with a handful of grass which he gave to the ewe saying "I was afraid she was going to starve to death".

Jack could take it all in good humor. And he loved every minute of it.

As for me - I learned to roll fleeces which came off each animal in a sheep-shaped blanket of warm, lanolin enriched wool. I would fold and roll each fleece into a cylinder, twist the neck wool into a rope long enough to tie around it to make a neat package and place it with others by the wall or stuff it into a wool bag for collection by the Wool Board. It was hard work but those days in the sun with the sea and mountains as a backdrop, a cool breeze to keep the midges off, a welcome dram of whisky or a break for tea and sandwiches brought out by Alisdair's wife, Margaret, were wonderful. Those were days in our lives.

Up the republic

Celebrating the 4th of July became a tradition at Castlehill. We would fly old glory from a staff made from an old oar that Jack found in the barn and attached to the gate posts at the bottom of the garden. Jack started the tradition in the 1st year we were in Polbain - and by the second and third year it was expected - and everyone would be at the Summer Isles Pub, waiting for the festivities to start. We would begin by buying 50 whiskeys - one for each state - and passing them around to all gathered. The first year it was a surprise and as the glasses filled, conversation dropped and all attention was riveted on the growing array of golden glasses. Then Jack would raise his glass and say "Who will drink a toast with me to freedom from English rule?", and there would be a cheer and all would drink.

The second year everyone in the village had heard about it and were there to partake. They would start singing "The Star Spangled Banner" or "America the Beautiful" when we came in the door - at least as many of the words as they could remember. We would then all repair to Castlehill for a real American 4th picnic supper - ham, potato salad, chocolate cake (chocolate imported from America) and dill pickles (found in Inverness at a specialty store). One year a friend came dressed in cowboy hat and boots with a star pinned to his shirt that said "Deputy" (he didn't know how to spell "Sheriff"). And the music would start, and the ceilidh would go on through the night. What fun!

Summer friends

And so the spring wound into summer - and the light came back full throttle. In fact, it never really got dark. By midsummer you could read a newspaper at midnight, and the ceilidhs would start and end in sunlight. The rythm of life picked up and the B&B's were full of visitors - many of whom returned year after year and became familiar faces around the village. Neville and Mavis, who owned the Lord Nelson Inn down in northern England, made it known that we had usurped their favorite cottage (they'd rented Castlehill for their holidays for years). We were sorry - but not very. So we had them to lunch, became friends, and stopped to visit them at their pub one summer when we went south (we were delighted with its traditional cozy ambience).

We met people who owned croft houses in Coigach but only came up for their holidays - and we forged friendships that have lasted through all the years since we left - friends that we still meet when we can, and talk and write to between visits. Some have visited us here, and we have been made welcome in their homes, scattered now throughout the UK from north to south. We have shared their lives from when they were young and single, through marriage and growing families. They have made our lives infinitely richer.

Another island

One fine warm day we took a picnic and went up the coast to see if we could get to the island of Handa - a bird sanctuary and breeding ground. We took a small boat from Tarbet and landed on a beautiful beach. There's a path that goes across the middle of the island where the great skuas nest on the open hilltops. Half the island is rimmed with cliffs and sea stacks hundreds of feet high. Sea pinks, many different kinds of seedum, and beautiful wild flowers in all colors cling to the cliff sides and cover the tops of the stacks. Puffins dig their burrows and build their nests on the stack tops - and I had never seen a real puffin. But I had heard about them all my life and wanted desperately to see one. When I was little I would often ask my mother to recite my favorite poem:

"There once was a puffin just the shape of a muffin,
and he lived on an Island in the bright blue sea.
He ate little fishes, which were most delicious,
and he had them for supper and he had them for tea.

This poor little puffin, he couldn't play nothin',
cause he hadn't anybody to play with at all.
So he sat on his island and he cried for a while,
And he felt very lonely and he felt very small.

Then along came the fishes, and they said if you wishes
you can have us for playmates instead of for tea.
Now they all play together in all kinds of weather,
And the puffin eats pancakes like you and like me."

I always wondered how they made the pancakes but the story was very satisfactory to a young animal lover.

Anyway, the island has huge, high cliffs where thousands of birds were nesting, flying and fishing. The skuas lived off the eggs and young birds - the divers, kittywakes, razor bills, guillemots, and gulls eat the many small fish swimming below. The water was so clear we could lie on the cliff edge and watch the guillemots playing games in the water below. They fly under water, chasing eachother, and sneaking up behind eachother to tweak a tail as they surface.

Every ledge, nook and cranny was packed with birds, some on eggs, some courting, some pairs grooming eachother. We found two broken eggs up where the skuas nest - one a greenish blue with brown spots, the other white with brown spots. The whole island was so beautiful - and we picnicked, hiked and sunned ourselves on the white sand beaches until the last boat back to the mainland took us away.