Scratch the surface of the island today and you may find that much of yesteryear is barely hidden. The rocks are ancient, as old as the planet itself. Much have they witnessed. Naturally the surrounding waters are central to island life. Those waters reflect, they shimmer, and they shine. The island is centred on a palette of blues and greens.
Where the waters are shallow, over sands and rolling on to white strands, the sea gives us blues that might suggest a mermaid’s tail, all dancing sequins, swirling into the green of the teal drake. Those shallow waters take on the blue hue of the fennel flower; they may be a piercing turquoise one day and become a translucent, mercurial silver the next.
Iona’s waters mesmerise, enticing paddling feet and braver souls. You may be joined in the water by an inquisitive seal, or a leap and a squeal, when the dolphins come to play.
On land the palette changes. Rich and regal colours dominate. And regal they should be, for these lands hold the bones of the ancient kings and lairds, of Scotland and its predecessors, at home and beyond. That said the island has two very different personas. To the visiting public it is a kaleidoscope of colourful cultivars. Fuchsias are rampant, festooned in figurines, tutu-clad ballet dancers in vermillion or carmine, peach blossom or the subtlest, the palest of blue lilacs, dusky pink. Montbretia is omni-present, fiery reds and burnt umbers, like a puffin’s rosette.
The colour envelopes us; in the ancient stones of the nunnery, where delicate maidenhair ferns and the lavender shades of ivy leaved toadflax cling to life. Greenery against the pinks and greys of the granite. Sheelagh watches over them, as always, ready with a bosey for the bereft.
Leaving aside the gardens in the village and along the two roads that ease our passage to far flung parts, we find wild flowers in wilder places. We need to lift the corners of Iona’s veil, have a wee poke underneath, give her surface a scratch, and a little delve into her past, her hidden depths.
It is the hues of the heathers that carry the bulk, auricula and plum, blood red like the head of the goldfinch. Off the beaten track we find the delicates, those little bright yellow tormentils, and the hardys clinging to the lichen crusted rocks. Deep purple, the hard rock of devil’s bit scabious, on the windswept tops, sharing space between the boulders and the tufts with tiny magenta bell heather.
I am drawn regularly to the higher ground; and an overview of what lies below, in this Thin Place. At first sight the land appears blanketed in greenery, a wilderness of emptiness shrugging aside the coloured cloak that grabs you by the roadside. By the shore the scimitar-billed curlews rise together, closely followed by an overture of oystercatchers, all harlequin hues in their motley.
That veil becomes more like a thick and cosy warming shawl, a comfort blanket, a coat of many colours as some of the visitors to the sacred isle may see it. Those ancient rocks prise their way through. The land is overwhelmingly wild, beneath a coat of many greens. Pistachio green and duck green, hints of the eider; that beauty spot the mallard drake wears so proudly. It is rough and it is tough. Boggy and squelching in places. Those higher grounds have never been suited to scratching a living from the land.
Not now, not before. And before is always with us here; in the legends of the monks, the Vikings too, and the ancients prior to them. I look across the waste lands, from one high point to another, and I see no signs that man has ever tamed these lands. Other than a mark on the map where the hermit hid in his hole.
Those high points, Dun I foremost even at a mere 101m, The Eminence in the south west of the island at 80m, and the Hill of the Lambs by Loch Staonaig a little lower, give the wider views, the bigger picture. Landscape in all its glory.
Such is the light it is the islands off that pull the wider view into focus. Far and wide there are silhouettes on the horizon. Coll and Tiree, with its weather station, are the big ones. More interesting comes with the smaller packages. Much visited Staffa with its caves and its columns, a mere giant step to that causeway of Antrim in the distant south. The lights of Skerryvore and Dubh Artach stand sentinel, safety on the waters thanks to the Stevenson family, and the shore base at Erraid from where towers were built on isolated rocks.
There is a sharper focus as your gaze, and your dreams, drift towards the islets; to Storm Island and Calf Island off the northern end, and at the south to Mouse Island, gems sparkling in sun-kissed waters, limned by those creamy sands, that teal drake again, his breast this time.
Lingering longer on Lunga, where the puffins dance, deep belly grumbles in their burrows, always entices. Perhaps it’s just as well Iona is not suitable puffin nesting land; the infrastructure may not cope. But Iona has the corncrake, the rasping ventriloquist, deep among the nettles and the golden ragwort. How I long to return in spring, to stand field side, reciting Rob Macfarlane’s eulogy, (recent winner of the Wainwright Prize - The Book of Birds, a must read, read it aloud) hoping for a fleeting glimpse, to hark at the bark; the deep throat hidden in the greenery.
And I wonder as I wander, if the monks of old may have been guided here by the call of the corncrake, Columba’s coracle answering the crex-crex, crex-crex, crex-crex. I can’t help feeling that this sound is as important as those colours of the seas and of the flowers. Did the monks arrive in the spring perhaps?
The shawl that is spread warmly over the island today is no shroud. It is woven from all that has preceded us here; from legends and colours and song. And it is magical to occasionally lift the corner and sneak a peek into what lies under our feet, treading softly.
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