Across Skye

Day Zero

Before we even began to walk, we gathered to talk and cook and eat, and watch two magnificent plays the evening before we set off. 

Under a tarp haphazardly stretched over poles off the side of a van, the meal was made, and the pot stirred out of the rain. We ate in the break between plays. 

One play mythic and factual and musical and intercut with images, photos and films - telling the red and black tale of those who fought and fight back against the clearances and capitalism, against the concreting over of the land, and against fascism. But that description underplays the humour and poetry and aliveness of it. 

The other play a bitterly funny set of songs lashing out at the ongoing clearance of Skye by airbnb tourism, by the ‘pretended belonging’ of those who come not to learn but to peddle a fantasy, and by absentee landlords and all who profit by trampling on the community that is humans and non-humans collectively known as the land. Then a brief piece on who are we mongrels? We who are not recently of the line of working class struggle, nor of the Gaeldom, but are still one with the struggle for community, care and the overthrow of capitalism, colonialism and all that crap.

Day One 

IN A NUTSHELL (13 MILES):

A storm gathered us up after we’d walked to Boreraig, and flung us into a Hazel wood for shelter. 

We touched the bitter salt tears of the clearance village of Boreraig where one of the great wrongs waits to be righted. 

We walked the path behind a Scotland-Palestine flag (land justice anywhere empowers land justice everywhere) and at the back an earth flag shepherding us (we need no borders to our belonging). 

DAY ONE IN LONG FORM:

The day began bright enough. 

We held a circle in the studio in Broadford, planning how to manage now that - after months of warm dry weather - this, the first day of the walk, was going to become awash with high winds, lashing rain, and increasing storm. Lorraine said it been the first day for months she’s had to wear full weatherproofs. 

Bruce’s boat - that had been going to meet us and carry our kit to where we’d camp at the clearance village - had no chance of landing in the crashing waves at the shore. He headed off to meet us in a few days time in Knoydart.

We had no way to get our kit to where we’d camp nor to be carried by boat the next morning across to Ord. What would we do?

A combination of the knowledge and care of the two angels of Skye and the wisdom of the crowd (our collective thinking) arrived at the solution.  

Such collective thinking is often called an assembly - which simply means individuals, sometimes after listening to expert’s advice, having the chance to propose thoughts and solutions without being tied to what they propose, and so building on each other’s perspectives. 

We arrived at the solution of stopping short to camp long before reaching the coast, so we could get our tents up before the storm took hold. It meant almost doubling our walking distance by heading over to the clearance village of Boreraig before coming all the way back to the hazel woods to cook and talk around a fire and camp the night in the howling winds. 

Above all, on Day One of the walk we were guided by the two Skye angels: Lorraine and Mike. 

One took us through the day to the clearance village. We heard poems and stories from her and another speaking from the wings. Of she who shaped the land and how the rough teeth of the Cullin mountains were cut. 

And she set us off one by one to walk alone down the steep rocky path to the shore where the roofless stone walls spoke of a time before community was cleared from the land for some soul-starved (stranger-to-himself) person’s pernicious profit. 

Someone walking the other way, having been passed one by one by two dozen of us silent meditative walkers, stopped me and asked “are you Buddhists?” and I said no, we’re walking for land justice, for these lands to be alive again with children and stories and life. 

The other Skye angel’s knowledge of the land had taken us to where we could pitch our tents in a wooded hide away from the winds. That evening - after eating food cooked in the huge pot - we were faces round the fire beneath the young hazel woods low tangled branches. Sleep came fitfully in the pouring rain. The next morning we woke to begin it all again. 

Day Two - 8 miles 

Day Two started with porridge under the shelter amongst the woods that had held off the worst of the winds. 

Packing up, we carried everything back down the hillside, across the stream, and into our three vans and the two angels’ cars. They guided us round to where Bruce’s boat could have landed us - Achnacoich, on the north side of Sleat. 

From Achnacoich we walked a winding road up and over to Armadale. Rising from rocky ocean edge, wending our way up through the young woods of the rising Glen re-becoming forest in the community’s hands. We reached the small loch at the top, paused, and were briefly swept by showers.

Unlike yesterday where we were on paths, walking this narrow winding tarmac road means cars pass us. 

Seeing our Scotland-Palestine flag, some honk their support, others stop to speak with us. 

We explain what we’re about and often they share too. One old man speaking of his relatives being cleared from here in the 1880s and of a geologist having written about watching the cleared families all walk past silently, as their community was destroyed. He is speaking to us as we also walk this land, and wonder what we can do to right this ongoing wrong. 

The sky cycles through rain and dry until, back down the other side - the side of Armadale - we were met by another, a third angel, and guided on a path through huge woods of ancient beech and more. 

We climbed a tall fence, and crossed the grounds of some rich man’s “sack them all” castle, and finally ended up at the amazingly well stocked lively community shop and then at their community owned sheep fank. This flat green square of land between stone walls, a fire pit in the centre, our shit pit dug outside its walls, much more accessible than where it was hidden in tangled woods the night before. 

Within the walls the huge cooking pots are stirred beneath our shelter. Others sit out by the fire as the day turns to dusk. 

Later in the darkness songs are sung and stories told - a piss-taking community of sacred grief and love and “we don’t mind if you think we’re foolish enough to believe we can regain all the land for community (community of humans living with the community of all beings). All belonging, no one a stranger once you’ve sat with them or walked with them, and suddenly understood the uniqueness each contributes to making the togetherness of all”.