Stranded

Stranded

Foula, 20 miles from Shetland UK, has telephone, broadband, electricity and piped water. Despite these developments, „the island of fowls” continues to face the challenge of being too remote.
After a choppy trip, our boat was hoisted into a concrete shelter to be clear of the waves. Wullie, a recent incomer out of 28 inhabitants and friend of our hostess, Isobel, drove us round Foula, where the central township was just a small cluster of old houses.
„Three kids attend our Eco-School, we only have a resident nurse, and the post-office is at the phone booth over there. With no shop, orders come by boat or plane three days a week.”
„I know you can’t see this treeless land as we do,” he went on. „The bog gives us scented fire at home. Last year we cut peat in the ditches now filled with rainwater. I use that old stone enclosure for kale seedlings, which survive salty spray but need protection from high winds. Our steep hills are great for common grazing. We try to be self-sufficient. This is our island: we use and protect it, so it supports and delights us.”
The next day wrapped in thick mist, I recalled what I had seen in Foula so far: foamy waves breaking on cliff arches in turquoise water, seals sunbathing on pebbles and skuas whizzing past my head. I didn’t want to leave yet, not that we could. Sailings and flights were cancelled because of a storm.
An ornithologist, a musician, a German hiker were invited to Isobel’s evening for the „stranded”. I glanced through Foula history in her press cutting collection. We discussed a film about the 1930 evacuation of St. Kilda, an Atlantic outlier.
„ Lights out at midnight,” she apologized.
After visiting the airfield three times, the musician missed his concert and the German his international connections. A child’s medicine didn’t arrive.
„We can hardly plan but won’t be a new St. Kilda. We're fighting to live here,” Isobel said firmly. In five months she died in hospital on the Mainland. She is buried in Foula.