Month on Iona, Scotland. October / November 2017
In the Beginning,
The Word was red,
And the Sound was Thunder
Pat O’Donohue, The Grace and Risk of Fire
Iona Hostel, Lagandorain
I arrived on Iona, after an intense period of academic work, in the middle of October on a grey and windy day via that familiar route from Glasgow via Oban, Craignure and Fionnphort.
I came to stay for a month to connect with the darkness and silence I was hoping to find, and with the roughness of nature and the elements.
John, the owner, with whom I had arranged my retreat and volunteer time, was absent the day I arrived, and Marc and Petri welcomed me warmly in Lagandorain and showed me around. The first days I had just for myself with time to land in the place.
I used to work for a few hours in the early part of the day, welcomed new guests arriving from different places of the world, or went for a walk to the beach with Snuffy, John’s dog.
Sometimes I visited the Abbey of Iona, sat in the church until it got too cold. One day I made a drawing.
But more often I visited the north end dunes and beaches for walks, sometimes went for a swim in the November cold sea, or I climbed Dun I, the highest hill of the island to see the sunrise. On free days I walked for hours, letting my steps and the impulse of the moment guide me, how I found Hermit’s Cell one day.
In the evenings often vivid, magnetic conversations came up in the common room which displayed the current energy that people visiting brought to the place – about living on an island like Iona, baking bread, the Anam Cara, belief and spirituality, life paths, making willow baskets, the sound of the cave on Staffa, the ever changing light, the different shapes of rainbows and the number of rainbows seen that day, the doctor that came just once a week, geology, art classes in Edinburgh, or, often, why at all coming to Iona.
After the first days on the island something started to shift in my perception. In the mornings I woke up in the darkness by the sound of the storm. And I began to paint what I heard…
What emerged were images of the wind shaping the air and the still invisible light around the island, which lead to the series of paintings “walking north”.
The longer I stayed the deeper I connected to the rhythm of the landscape and nature and to the texture of the elements.
Even watching the sea, the sky and the light every day for hours I kept getting astonished about shades of blue, green and even red that could unexpectedly reveal themselves.
The month on this ancient island was a gift which fills me with deep gratitude and humility after the profound change it evoked in me.
M’
Photographs, while being taken, interrupt the contact with the place which reveals itself by (M. B.-S.) not holding on to it but being in it and in its continuous change.