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 ISLETS..............
Colin Will, UK
We
drive up the central hilly spine of the main island, called Mainland, heading
for the Yell ferry. We arrive in Toft just after sailing time, but the crew
see our car coming down the hill, and wait for us. The long isle of Yell is
shrouded in thick mist, and we see only peat bog on either side of the road.
At Gutcher we catch the boat for Unst with time to spare. This island appears
greener, more fertile, cultivated. We skirt the hamlet of Baltasound and make
for the Keen of Hamar, our northernmost destination.
The
hillside appears barren, a field of angular stones, but this is a special place,
worth the journey of a thousand miles. The snakeskin-scaled rocks here were
once emplaced deep within oceanic crust—the Unst ophiolite. Our Hamar
field consists of weathered serpentinite debris, and over the hill are abandoned
talc and chromite mines, but what we've come to see are the flowers.
In
this bleak, impoverished landscape grows a concentration of Arctic-Alpine rarities
usually found on high mountains, and one found here and nowhere else. We tiptoe
over the rubble, for fear of treading on one of these scattered botanical gems.
At each new discovery we call across to each other to come and look. In this
fashion we move, slowly, stooping, zigzagging, from Moss Campion to stunted
Purple Orchid, from Norwegian Sandwort to Edmonston's Chickweed, to Mountain
Everlasting—a hoard of beautiful survivors in a scree of desolation.
Home
now, I walk on beach pebbles to reinforce memory.
lea
of a boulder
slow clump of pink blossoms
trembles in the wind
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