Farafoot Bushcraft

What I expected and what I got are so far apart that I can hardly make sense of myself as I was then in 2018: an excited explorer, a relieved escapee, “just an idealist” as my late father-in-law deduced. It’s true that I escaped aspects of my old life, but the new life has so much more complication than the simple one that I sought. Living remotely is full of compromises, frustrations and…

The Island. No man is one, but plenty ‘do’ islanding, often for that effect. On the island urban anonymity is shattered, and those few people that you encounter see through you, in the sense of ‘into’ you, as clearly as you are forced to see into yourself. There are wide reaches out here, long stretches where other people can be avoided, but that only means that the next person you meet has the…

Katy had her last day at school, and at the hostel, yesterday. She was upset, amongst other feelings. She had an exam the very same day, but was hardly concerned about that at all, because what is really important is the loss of the life that she has lived and breathed till now, and the people she’s been living it with, outside of home. What I remember about when I left school is what she…

… and not all of them are portals of escape. The largest property we, or I, have ever been responsible for is probably the neediest one too, and now, after three years’ work, we ask it to reward our continuing efforts to renovate and decorate it, with paying guests. The house I’m referring to was once the shooting lodge on Ulva (the island next door to us), and after many incarnations we’ve…

Even saying the words “Writer’s block” stops any more words from coming. I should begin, then, with a picture. Unusually vivid May sunset reflected on the landscape: The writing blockage is self-inflicted, through trying to create a new story using the fables that I wrote for a book called Autostoryography. I made these simple stories when I left my job, as a way to clarify and assert my…

The census came late, as many things do. We are now among the counted, but I don’t think the record amounts to much. I’ve just declared that I completed it truthfully, and yet the questions make truthful answers impossible to give. I wonder about the propriety of making a census return a legal obligation whilst not providing for people to make an honest representation of themselves. The concept…

This is my third attempt to write a blog that captures what I’m thinking. The trouble with the times we’re in, is expressing something that doesn’t seem to diminish or ignore what’s critically important in the world: intractable destruction and suffering. Paying proper regard to those situations isn’t the only thing that closes-out the less pressing topics on my mind. There are active processes…

Some mistakes that I made before moving to the island include one that is particularly hard to deny in this brutal weather: that hardship, beyond a certain point, is matched not by commensurate fitness but rather by immobility and compensatory eating. The rain and wind drain everything away except, in the best case, the appetite for filling food and a moderate amount of strong…

Some things don’t change. Reviewing our expenses, we decided that a shopping trip to the mainland once-in-a-while would help us to be more economical. We set aside Tuesday after the New Year, when Katy would still be at home so there would be enough people to cover looking after the animals. When Monday arrived we had to make plans, forcing a sober reappraisal. After experiencing a whole…

The effort it takes…. to get to where other people start from

Days are short. Really short. And nights are long. I do like to sleep, but the puritan inside me says “enough! Do something useful” The usual Winter issues come around: storms, lack of light, difficulties getting about, and I don’t think I’m that much further on in my handling of them. In some ways I’m feeling less equipped. Since this Autumn there’s a critical difference from the past three…

Awaiting Storm Arwen It’s over. That’s how I’ve been feeling about the essence of living here on the Island. The idea that this strange life we lead on Gometra is a kind of research project has made it much more easy to reconcile the oddness of our choices. We didn’t come here as an experiment, but to see it that way makes for perspective when it gets tough. My father-in-law asked me, back in…

Lilliput Life: can you make out your size?

How capable do you feel of living without fossil fuels? For myself, I can hardly imagine a world without them. At the same time, though, I can’t see myself as a participant in the act of coal and oil extraction. What I mean is just that; the scale of the rigs, the pits, the quarries are out of my perceptual understanding. Check the scale of the pylons. Tip of the iceberg. Thinking about the…

Our family relatives have left the islands. They simply went in late Spring, just before things out here get so much more manageable (weather, ease of travel etc.), and it’s only now that Summer is over that I’ve realised their departure is final. The thing about being joined, then left, is that it leaves you holding the failure: the feelings of loss, the practical hurdles, the unanswered…

What Season is This?

Autumn! It makes me happy, but it also makes me worry – about all the produce going to waste. Apples after the rain. There aren’t enough people close-by to use the harvest, so the alternative is to preserve it. I had a pickling day on Saturday, and I don’t think I’m up for another one of those just yet, even though there’s still a box of cucumbers I haven’t dealt with. I tried to use the root…

It’s being another strange weekend. The gathering took place yesterday – no sheep out of place – but the billy goat suddenly wandered over the hillside and into the in-by, eyeballing the kitchen window. He’s a sight to behold, unseen before so near to the houses. Could it be for water? We ran out last night. The taps are dry, and so are the burns, though heavy dews have watered the grass. Where…

We were travelling back from Ulva on the quad-bike yesterday afternoon, remarking and pointing all the way at the band of fog along the loch and the stray wisps of mist hanging over the water closer-in. And yet Ulva, and Gometra ahead of us, were standing apart in the sunshine, not above the fog but in a clearing within it. Unusual as this looked, once we crossed to Gometra the conditions became…