Carol McGorry

In July at North Roe in the Shetland Islands, I rented a one-bedroom chalet from crofters Iwona and Neil Charleson.  The Charlesons raise sheep, cows, and chickens on their farm, Toam; heat their croft home with peat; and rig rows of garlic, broccoli, and potatoes-their garden willow-lined to break the wind.  On the first night’s stay, the Charleson’s make dinner, a roast leg of their lamb and  home-brewed beer.  During dinner, Iwona points out the window to a side yard, and says how in the spring she heard a sheep wailing outside, just under the sill.  She ran out that day, saw the ewe presenting breech, and stood fixed.  But she then quickly slipped her hand into the birth canal, pushed her arm and hand up further to grab the lamb and turned it.  No training for the moment.  And now in July they anticipated a calving crisis.

Beth the Cow, sent out to visit a neighboring bull during the seasonal meet-up, did not come home pregnant.  She was later artificially inseminated and was now pregnant long into the summer, grazing on too rich grass cover.  The calf could grow far too big to birth, Iwona said, but added, in a crisis she could call on neighbor Douglas Murray.

Enter Douglas and Bertha Murray’s stone home, Isbister, and you have to double-over just to get in the door.  Unfold on the inside and you’re in the ben, the sitting space, and don’t know where to focus first.  There’s a wall of red and blue and green prize ribbons-first, second, third prizes in sheep competitions.  On a far wall, several pairs of jeans hang over the oil-burning Rayburn stove, drying.  Look up-a rifle is propped across a timber-for firing at rabbits gnawing the cabbage.

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I flew late in the evening this past July from Edinburgh airport onto the sandy south end of the Shetland Islands.  It was a clear night but the pilot warned of wind.  Upon our approach, the 35-passenger turboprop bounced and shimmied.

It’s my third visit to Shetland.  Each time the Simmer Dim falls slowly, making for short twilight nights.  If the skies are clear, the soft light blends land with sea with sky.  Few shadows are cast to make distinctions in the landscape.

The light I see upon arrival is yellow-white, bathing the brown-green hills.  But after the first dim, I wake to thick and layered cloud cover. For the next two weeks, the clouds pile up, tumble, and rain.  The wind is dogged. I scramble in gloves and wool beret, about the hills above my great-grandmother’s croft ruin.  The legs of the tripod sink into the wet peat; I step on a boulder and it wobbles.  Nothing in this landscape seems firm.