As Easter approaches, Kirsteen Bell and Annie Worsley find sweet grass, sweeter herbs, and thin wobbles of lambs. 

Dear Annie,

I’m off gallivanting again, starting my letter to you from as far North as I have ever been. After a roller coaster night on the ferry, the arrival into Shetland was far softer; heavy cobalt water lightening with a promising peachy glow from behind Bressay.

My first view of the Shetland mainland on the west was in shadow, a few white rectangles visible against the dark ridge of land. I was sleep-deprived and nursing my first coffee, so I can hopefully be forgiven for briefly wondering why the houses were at the edge, so close to the sea and not tucked into shelter. Honestly. Of course they are. Shetland is a crofting county. That’s why I’m here, for goodness’ sake. There are always regional differences to shape and weft of croftland, to stories and lives lived, but history of ‘improvement’ remains the same: people forcibly moved away from land known for generations, gripping to the edges where they could at all. Always somewhere in time there are humans trying to better their own lot at the cost of others. 

I’m not sure if it’s the news, or something else that had me feeling a little lost as I drove around early-morning Lerwick. I sat idling on the Sea Road under houses whose eaves huddle against the wind, watching white plumes race at rocks across the bay. Increasingly, I crave the familiar when I travel, and so I fill with a surge of warmth when I recognise the sharp curve of a cormorant’s neck, its supple body dipping into a dive. Even as I am delighting at being here, I feel the pull back to my own shore. 

It becomes my theme of the week, that push and pull. I wonder if it comes from the feeling of being constantly tossed between yellow-green fields and seaglass waves as I drive round myriad voes, over bridges, causeways, ferries, climb switchbacks, curl round fells and dip into dales. I had no seasickness on the trip from Aberdeen — my friend called me part-fulmar! But here on land, I have an inner discomfort all week from not quite knowing where North is.  The approach to where I’m staying becomes marked in my mind by a fluorescent and blue boiler suit fixed to a fence, forever kicking its heels into the wind. In the field below, round black-wrapped bales reflect the light; over the road, sun bounces from round plastic floats landed on the shore.  

Everywhere I walk too I am drawn both away from and towards people. Near the Airbnb, I skirt the lower path edging the sea, out of sight of the houses. And yet when I see the tumbled stone gables on my horizon I make towards them like a bee seeking nectar. The emptiness of any Highland landscape is a grim illusion, spun not by those that are hefted here. 

***

By luck, my scheduled trip coincided with a clear enough weather window for the ferry to run me home again. Now a week further into March, I hear that it has once again been put off by storms.

Rain comes with force today, a battering weight on the slate and glass. With each fresh clatter my thoughts scan outside for anything that might bear the consequences of this weather: the recently chopped wood is well under cover, and the hens have shelter enough. Some of those crofters anticipating lambs will have sheds to bring the ewes in at night, others will be trusting to the hardiness of the sheep to endure the worst of it. And they do, of course, otherwise why else would some of us keep on with it?

I asked the crofters I visited in Shetland if they’d started lambing yet, anticipating a similar answer to the one I received from a friend here not too long ago, ‘Ready for it, aye’. However, both folk I asked told me Shetland lambing wouldn’t start until April. Another pal over in Perth says she’ll be in the thick of it in May. Yet, I’ve seen thin wobbles of lamb twins appear on the shores of the township here as early as February. When do you start seeing lambs in your township? Will you have any grazing on parts of the croft this year? 

The fence has been down around our croft for a few decades, and so for years we had regulars of those ewes that roamed the township who would come back each year to lamb. Each birth tethered the next generation to the same land. Did you know there’s no word for hefting in Gaelic? Only a chur an eòlas an àite, sowing the knowledge of a place. Some internal memory brought them back to the relative shelter of hollows between knolls and scant protection from the trees. There were few enough sheep that their grazing didn’t stop the birch and oak that now dominate the croft. 

There are no lambs round our house this year. The crofter who kept them sold them on as age finally got the better of him. For the first time in I don’t know how long, there are no sheep at all in our township. There are still over the loch, and further east along the lochside, but I wonder at this change. Is it indicative of a wider change that might be spreading? Though every hill and vale seemed home to sheep in Shetland, one of the older couples I met shared that they were the only ones using the common grazings, that their neighbours were choosing other ways to work with their land. It was a passing observation, and while clearly not the case across the islands, it echoed the pattern in my own immediate community. How do you see it in South Erradale?

It’s a funny thing, that learning more about the differences in crofted land across the Highlands & Islands sharpens my gaze on our own land. I’m looking forward to hearing how the winter hands off to spring with you!

With love,

Kirsteen x

*

Dear Kirsteen,

Oh my, Shetland. I’ve never been but would love to go. We have visited Orkney, the Outer Hebrides, Skye, Mull, Arran and many of the smaller isles. For years family holidays involved ferry rides and adventure. Now, from South Erradale, island views accompany me almost every day. 

I was struck by you saying you felt rather lost while travelling yet found comfort in spotting the small and familiar. These things ground us when our feet hesitate upon unknown roads. And yes, news of war and distress, the strident voices of those who hold power, are undermining me too. I feel discombobulated, upended. This is when deeply delving roots are important. I look for the known and companionable – shapes, colours and scents among the hills, fields and coast of home. Like sheep, hefted to place.

Your thoughts about the contrasts and similarities between island and Highland crofting resonated deeply. Differences in landforms, geology and soils, overlain by centuries of land-use, social and political change make for considerable variation in the histories of crofting practices as well as landscapes. I’m excited for your book, the conclusions of your research.

Our small peninsular (known locally as “Overside”) is bounded by the Gair Loch to the north and Loch Torridon to the south. As in Shetland, crofts here cling to its edges in a string of crofting townships. Frills and frayings at the margins of great swathes of open country made of mountain, crag, hill and moorland, lochs, rivers and burns, small copses and peat bogs. Away from the sea this complex land is largely empty of trees and people. But one look at an Ordnance Survey map and the pre-clearance history of small settlements and shielings, veined by paths and drovers’ roads, emerges from the contours and symbols for rock and water. Gaelic names cover the spaces and tell of groves of oak and apple, places with long cultural and environmental histories reaching into a remoter past. Just as you say — the wild emptiness is an illusion. This place is made of layers upon layers of story and song.

I was very interested to learn about later lambing in Shetland. It’s the same here. In South Erradale it begins in April and continues through to May. Perhaps exposure to weather extremes is a factor. Storm winds and violent showers are the norm in the first half of a Wester Ross spring. Gales and squalls are enhanced by the proximity of sea with mountain ranges. Uplift, updraft, cloud-building, wind-funnelling are intensified by geology and geomorphology. 

One estate farm has a big shed, and they will begin lambing soon, but our township ewes have almost always lambed outside in May. My neighbour’s sheep, hefted to salted pasture, bog myrtle-scented air and sky lark lullabies, would lamb near the croft house. Then she’d bring her ewes and newborns into our small, sheltered field, something her family has done since crofting began here in the mid-1800s. The pairc is roughly half an acre of peaty but relatively dry ground. The grass is sweet, the wee herbs coming into bud and flower sweeter still.

My friend died fifteen months ago. Her ewes were given to local young crofters, but they return to her front gate and our pairc in anticipation of lambing. Hefted to specific place, their deepest instincts seem akin to loving home, almost the Welsh “hiraeth”. A chur an eòlas an àite, sowing the knowledge of a place, is exactly the same. A wishing for home.

South Erradale has fewer sheep than it once did. Less than twenty years ago there were hundreds of ewes. Numbers have fallen dramatically. The effects of such a marked reduction in grazing intensity are striking. Heather has rapidly replaced great swathes of grass and rush on surrounding hills. Patches of scrub have appeared around the edges of crofts. But there are benefits. Gorse provides nesting habitats for birds. With the birds come berries and seeds, and thus tree saplings, especially rowan. Such changes are contested by some, as all changes often are, but increased biodiversity, the return of species not seen here for decades will, I hope, ultimately help crofting. These other organisms are also hefted to this land — plants through the soil’s seed bank, birds, insects and mammals to the naturally replenishing food supplies.

As you have noted elsewhere, the shift away from the old ways of transhumance, of sheep and cattle going up “onto the hill” to a summer landscape of mountain and loch, a practice which once reduced pressures on coastal crofts, has been expanding. Keeping flocks and herds closer to home because crofters must find additional income also occurs on Overside. Pressure on the “in-bye” land and township commons is increasing; patches of degraded land are spreading.

So, your feelings of push and pull exist here. In me, in the community, in the landscape. Lots of change, happening at pace, in some cases too quickly for natural systems to adjust, yet in others, beneficial to wildlife.

There is no doubt, as the old ways of crofting are supplanted, as croft houses are bought for second homes and numbers of crofters and livestock fall, we are witnessing a seminal shift in practices and outcomes.

But I think we should fight to secure crofting as a heritage activity, see it once more as the heart of Highland and Island culture, important to both Scottish history and geography. With government support built around crofting and small-scale agriculture rather than it being hefted to large-scale land ownership, maybe the changes we are seeing will generate outcomes which benefit wider society. 

Once again, I have stepped away from the news of war and environmental catastrophe in the Gulf. Skylarks are singing. The air is as crisp and sweet as white wine. There’s so much hope on a morning like this. While humanity goes to war with itself, let’s turn to nature for solace, loving it back in return. And let’s hug our loved ones tightly, every chance we get.

With love,

Ax

*

Kirsteen Bell is a Scottish writer of narrative non-fiction and sometimes poetry. All her words are gathered from the croft in Lochaber where she lives, and the surrounding Scottish Highlands. Her writing and reviews can be found in such places as Paperboats, Caught by the River, The Guardian Country Diary, The Lochaber Times, and Northern Scotland Journal. Kirsteen can also be found at Moniack Mhor, Scotland’s Creative Writing Centre, where she is Projects Manager and Highland Book Prize Co-ordinator. 

Annie Worsley is a writer, crofter, grandmother and geographer with an enduring love of the Scottish Highlands. In 2013 she and her husband moved to the crofting township of South Erradale near Gairloch. While her husband was a community pharmacist, Annie worked on Red River Croft. She began a blog about life on the croft and then wrote essays on nature and environment for various publications including Elementum Journal, Women on Nature, the Seasons’ Anthologies edited by Melissa Harrison, Caught by the River and Inkcap Journal. Her first book about life on Red River Croft and the natural history of Wester Ross, ‘Windswept: Life, Nature and Deep Time in the Scottish Highlands’, was published by William Collins in 2023, and is out now in paperback.