A letter to the Hebrides

If I were to write a loveletter to the hebrides, I would be liberal with the ink until the page was swimming with words like fish in a spring tide. I would wipe my tears along the paper's edge until it was bordered with salt, and I would write about hopeful waters. About the soft sand that seems, from a distance, white - but is in fact a medley of reds & pinks & greens, the finely crushed shells turning my toes into a rainbow. I would write about what it is like to live on the edge, between land & sea, where my small white cottage is a stone's throw from the curling waves and where I learn to feel safe beside the vastness. 

I would write about the red lionsmane jellyfish - the crimson blob in the water that fills me with equal parts awe and fear. When I first arrived on the island, the locals warned me about the the excruciating pain caused by the lionsmane, and shortly after I watched someone be airlifted to hospital after being stung near the beach outside of my cottage. Their near-transluscent tentacles can trail longer than 30 meters, so I’ve never been able to feel completely at ease in the water. But I’m not sure that matters, because I don’t go to the sea to feel safe. I go there to feel alive. 

After the introduction, and a jellyfish-themed tangent, I would write about the khaki kelp swaying in the current. Once, we had a storm so severe that it simply wasn’t safe to make the 40 minute cycle across the peninsula and over the hills to the nearest shop. When food was running low, the kelp kept me fed. For two whole days it was kelp risotto, kelp soup, kelp noodles. And I would tell them - my beautiful, windswept, hebrides - about how much I long to be a kelp, dancing, flowing, surrending to the tide. 

All my life, I have fought. I have fought to be seen, to be heard, to be loved, and yet what I really wish to do is surrender. I would explain how living here on the water's edge has taught me that I can, in fact, do both. To fight and surrender, simultaneously. Kelp can only afford to sway with the tide because their root-like hold fasts secure them to the rocks, but I am young and unmoored and searching for an anchor. Here, there is neither good nor evil: only sky and sea. 

And then there are the rockpools: small puddles cupped by the barnacle-crusted rock, glowing green with gutweed (one of my favourite snacks), speckled with blood red anenomes, and occasionally holding a small fish captive. A great medley of life viewed through a small window. People always talk about height and distance lending great views: we climb to the summit of mountains for a ‘good view’, where we can look down on the world below like a god. But this is my favourite kind of view: nose grazing the water, my eyes so close that they can barely focus, my whole life a glimmer, my whole world a rockpool. I would tell the hebrides that I see, and love, the parts of them that most people forget to see. I suppose deep down, I long for someone to say that to me.

Eventually, my loveletter would transform into a plea for forgiveness. And I would tell the hebrides that I am sorry - so deeply sorry. I am sorry that these tranquil sands are littered with plastic; I am sorry that the turquoise water swirls with spilled oil; I am sorry that the peaceful sea bed is raked by beasts of steel; I am sorry that the flowerless dunes are incessantly nibbled by sheep; all while I stand idly by. I would apologise over and over again until my ink ran out, and the words halted on my page like fish caught in a net. ​