Read Online Seasons on Harris by David Yeadon - Free Book Online

pastures below the conical summit of Chaipaval, it was obvious that we had met a couple who had truly found their mutual purpose—and passion—in life.
    But that didn’t stop them from being direct and blatantly honest in their comments and opinions on the islanders and island life in general.
    â€œNorthton’s a pretty odd place today,” Bill chuckled as we set off in discovery of a series of beautiful secluded beaches overlooking the Sound of Harris. “Only forty or so houses, but since we’ve lived here, there’s been a surge of ‘incomers’ to the islands buying up the old crofts at prices that are cheap for them but very inflationary for us. It’s become a real eclectic mishmash here—folks moving in from America, Ireland, Canada, Germany, Sweden, Holland, even Morocco. The original village here of Taobh Tuath was a couple of miles away but, like all the west coast machair , it was cleared in the mid-1800s to make way for sheep. Typical of the lairds in those days. Just listen to their justification: ‘This will benefit all parties, relieving these lands of its redundant populations will improve the conditions of those who remain behind and at the same time relocate the expatriated in a sphere where there is certainty of finding productive outlets for their energies…’ Then, when all that nonsense stopped—when the sheep economy failed—a ‘new village’ was rebuilt here from the earlier 1900s onwards. It was virtually a model crofting community with clearly fenced twelve-acre crofts in a line above the bay and open grazing all across Chaipaval—or to give it its correct Norse name, Ceapabhal —‘the bow-shaped hill.’”
    â€œSo—all this was Viking territory?” asked one of the dozen or so walkers who had joined Bill and Chris at the MacGillivray Center.
    And that’s all Bill needed to start him off on a fascinating summation of island history. A few in the group, however, were more interested in the wealth of wildflowers already appearing in spring profusion across the honey-scented machair , laced in lark song.
    â€œOh my God, Henry, just look at these wonderful Dactylorhiza incarnata [apparently a rare species of marsh orchid]!” Others among them seemed ecstatic as they checked off their discoveries: bird’s foot trefoil, ladies’ bedstraw, centaury, meadow rue, harebells, knapweed, poppies, and clovers galore—all gloriously swaying about in the lush grasses.
    Two others were avid ornithologists, bowed under the load of binoculars and cameras dangling from their necks and exuding paroxysms of delight at glimpses of arctic terns, gannets (skuas), golden eagles, oyster-catchers, pied wagtails, and a host of other more obscure species that were mere litanies of names to us. Until they spotted seals off one of the rocky coastal shoals: “I’m sure that’s what they are!” gushed one of them. “Or maybe otters.”
    â€œNo, no, they must be seals…it’s hard to tell, though…maybe porpoises…”
    Without binoculars—which the couple seemed reluctant to share with the rest of the group—we all stared hard at the shoals but saw only the chop and slap of the tide on worn black strata.
    Bill was now waxing eloquent about “the real deep history” of this bare, beach-indented sweep of machair that wrapped itself for miles around the base of Chaipaval like a vast emerald-green cape. He didn’tseem to have much patience with the rape, pillage, and plundering ways of the marauding Vikings of the ninth century, and as we stood among humpy lumps of turf and small exposed segments of ancient stone walls, he did a splendid job of re-creating life and lifeways here during the Bronze and Iron Ages.
    â€œIt’s almost like he lived in those times—going back five thousand years!” I heard one of the group whisper to a friend as Bill