Off The Shore - A lighthearted short story from IONA

 Regular readers of this blog may remember that in October last year we were at a writing retreat on the Island of Iona, admirably run by Kenneth Steven, the Scottish author.

One of the challenges Ken set us was to write something that linked us with the more ancient communities that had lived on Iona. Walking by the beach, my eyes fell on the seaweed which littered parts of the beach. 21^st century seaweed would be very little different to 7^th century seaweed, I reasoned.

What emerged surprised me. I have never engaged with short story writing, but I really enjoyed producing this very short one. It was not difficult to imagine the situation at all and I found a quite remarkable website which gave me several of the ideas used in the story: it was packed full of information about the use of seaweed as fertiliser and the encouragement to its readers to make use of seaweed if they had it available to them, felt to have that sense of being of the ‘Wisdom of The Ages’.

Ken’s challenge gave rise to an opportunity to discover something I knew nothing about; the internet provided impressive detail and these two, linked with the Island’s ecology, resulted in the following light-hearted story, which I hope you might enjoy

Off the Shore.

An older monk of seventh century Iona talks to a Novice from beyond Mull.

‘You probably made your long journey here expecting to see and hear of miracles. Well, that’s good; so let me tell you of one that I witnessed.’

‘We were approaching the sowing season with the last year’s seeds waiting impatiently to be in the soil.’

‘I was one of the brothers instructed to take part in the first and biggest kelp gathering of the year. Oh! I’m too old for that now; it’s the slime and the smell and the weight of the fronds before they’ve been at least partly dried by sun and warm breeze. Now I know the seaweed is a gift from God that makes barren, windswept soil like this fertile. But the Spring lift! It’s a killer!’

‘I still can’t fathom why we grow the food-plants quite so far from the shore, but we do. So it’s down-and-back, down-and-back fifty times a day with the brackish bundles, kept partially secure by those long strands as thick as three fingers, and the rest of the slimy load making the back of the habit sodden - and icy-cold if the wind is blasting from the north or the east.’

‘So I lay awake, gloomy at the prospect of the gathering and listened to a wind howling round our huts as a mad storm gathered over Mull. I couldn’t sleep for the din and the threat of losing the roof. All night the thought of being out in that wind and rain, going backwards and forwards to ever more distant parts of the shore, became uglier and uglier with the seaweed harbouring all sorts of black and slippery evils.’

‘Then about first light, the wind began to drop and I dared to hope for a gentler day for the gathering. As the greys gave way to faint greens in the East, there was even a hint of sun poking out between the retreating clouds. By the time the bell rang to summon us to Prime, I was fully awake, but still fretful, as I reluctantly headed towards our communal gathering place. At least all our shelters were intact, Praise God!’

‘Then the miracle! The wild winds of the night had torn up a rich mix of kelp and wrack and green hair-like seaweeds and dropped them in a pile as high as your shoulder, right at the foot of the growing beds.’

‘Oh! Praise the Lord for His goodness!’

‘Of course, you as a young man from way-beyond-Mull would have no idea of the graciousness of that gift yet: it’s incomparable. It brings the whole growing area into life. It keeps the soil moist when the fickle winds dry the surface unexpectedly and threaten tender plants. Burned to ash, it helps those plants to reach a generous maturity. Also, a compost heap laced with seaweed is like no other! And, even more, balls of seaweed left on the ground among the chickens, within the space of a single day, yield hordes of tiny, creeping, crawling creatures that the chickens fight to gobble up as soon as the balls are rolled over.’

‘It’s wonder on wonder on wonder – and, for a whole moon’s cycle we didn’t have to gather any more of the stuff.’

‘Now that’s what I call a miracle!’

Kenneth Steven’s blog can be found HERE 

The website about seaweed as a fertiliser can be found HERE 

And if you love Iona, you may enjoy the more serious IONA: The Nunnery -a poem of justice and women’s place in the church