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2021, a year of Archipelagos for Sarah, Skyelark and me -Bahamas, Shetland, and next week IOS, Isles of Scilly. Actually Scilly is a ‘they’. An archipelago of 140 or so islands, islets and rocks. Where is it? When you reach Land’s End...keep going(by air or sea) 28 miles due South. We will be in St. Mary’s, the largest of the islands at 2½ miles by 1¾ miles. It is home to most of the people of the Isles of Scilly.  |
Just as human bones get stronger when subjected to stress and tension, many things in life benefit from stress, disorder, volatility, and turmoil. Dubbed: antifragile, these are things that not only gain from chaos but need it in order to survive and flourish. Shetland has definitely provided an anti fragile worls. now as we reentet into the CZs Comfort Zones of English Country life, time to reflect, appreciate and enjoy what was missing for these past 4 months- comforts
Now on Fair Isle, because of salt water, and clearings for sheep, there are no such things as trees on Fair Isle. The Life of wood, and how it shows growth death and rebirth, is just a soveneir. There is another kind of ecosystem here, and it works, a solitude but not lonlieness, and a general unwinding of the worlds we have known.
The only thing to stand guard between the solitude of me is two defient rocky mountains in the distance, as I look out of our kitchen window. Yet these rocks rock! Love it here. In all its stark spledor. I have had this saying: I haven't been everywhere, but it is on my list. Well, Fair Isle is North Of Everywhere.
I was asked today, "Who is the most important person I ever met?" I answered: "That mountain."
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| Gathering Moss |
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| Mosses number some 22,000 species and they inhabit nearly every ecosystem on earth and grow in places as diverse as the branch of an oak and the back of a beetle. |
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I look at all this vastness and return to all this smallness, the magic of moss-an extraordinary celebration of smallness and the grandeur of life,. This humble moss is surprisingly magical , covering the whole island. It is the signiture of all things here- The sheep eat it, we walk on it and the mountians are clothed in it. Walking on this soft sponginess is like walking on a bouncy conveyer belt... Nature itself is one vast miracle and each of us in our personal life repeats that miracle. Human nature? Perhaps. |
