Ah, the wind in Traverse City was cutting; small branches, having succumbed to its gusts, littered the back garden. And just outside the garage door in the alley two huge crows were dining on a dead squirrel lying in the snow, who might have come down with one shattered branch lying on the pavement.
Crows and gusty winds always bring back memories of my visits to my mother and her husband David, who lived on the Isle of Skye for five years in the late seventies. They owned an ancient little croft house, with two-foot thick stone walls that had withstood the intense battering of vicious North Atlantic winds for centuries. Just a mile to the northwest of our snug cottage was a sheer cliff that dropped 600-700 feet straight down to the restless ocean. I’d lie flat on the ground and nervously inch to the edge to stare down at the icy water and awesomely monstrous, bashing waves that made the earth vibrate over a considerable area.
Mom told me she once saw the periscope of a submarine out there...
Hooded crows, a constant plague on rural Skye, would wait patiently until ewes gave birth in March, Then swoop down to pluck out the eyes of newborn lambs. Our only neighbor Willy, a shepherd, got little or no sleep for weeks as he tried to protect his flock of about 200 sheep from these predators, and from the often fearsome weather.
Shepherds on Skye would set baited traps during lambing season and place them on the barbed wire fences and ancient stone walls that surrounded their flocks. Hooded crows would land to eat the bait- and bang! Their bodies were displayed on the barbed wire as a warning to other crows. Willy swore they were an effective deterrent.
The March weather could be horrid at lambing time. Snowstorms, gale-force winds, and icy daggers of rain were common. My mother and David would assist Willy during this impossibly busy time by popping fragile new lambs, especially a weak twin, into our warm oven. Or, they would revive them with a vigorous towel-rub by the peat fire. The kitchen’s warm flagstone floor would be awash in fresh, bleating babies.
Cut-up rubber glove-fingers, stretched over various bottles, served as nipples when formula bottles were in short supply. The infants would usually need to be coaxed to suckle, but they’d soon get the idea, and gain strength quickly. Within an hour, they’d suckle with zest, their tails wagging enthusiastically.
In an hour or two Willy would unite delighted mothers with their babies. All he had to do was let the infants out our cottage door. The correct ewe would bah-h excitedly and dash up to her baby, who always knew where to find her milk. United again they’d wander off, content, into the most appalling weather.
Sometimes a lamb would die at birth. The ewe, inconsolable, would bleat forlornly for her dead baby. Having nothing to live for, a mother might die. Willy’s solution was ingenious. He’d quickly skin the dead lamb a little way off, then, using rough twine, strap the hide onto an orphaned newborn lamb whose mother had died giving birth. The mourning mother would sniff the baby carefully, then delightedly accept it as her own. In a few weeks the twine would rot and the old lambskin would fall off, but by then the mother had memorized the other sniff. Everyone was happy!
Sheep were Willy’s only source of income, and he worked incredibly hard to keep them safe. He was an old man then- perhaps 75- thin, wiry, and with no teeth, but tough as nails, capable of dashing around in a blizzard wearing only a shockingly thin, tattered overcoat over elderly jeans, flannel shirt and an ancient woolen sweater, to attend dozens and dozens of births. I always felt awe that Willy could survive out there with only itinerant help, and that infants, snug inside their mothers, could be born into a raging blizzard and still manage to stay alive. But they did. With a few exceptions, his lambs survived and thrived.
Sometimes, when the snow was intense, David would bundle up in five layers of clothing and go out to make sure Willy was OK. He’d come back looking like a snowman. I had to broom him clean.
One day nearly twenty years later, farmer friends passing by on the dusty road heard too many bleating sheep, wondered about it, and went into Willy’s croft house- to find him peacefully dead in bed. He was 94.
Veterinarians on wild Skye have a very hard life, too. We’d hear their many adventures recounted in the village pub in the tiny town of Portree after things died down a bit, toward April, when we’d travel to town for a pint.
Jinji-cat and the family dogs, Charlie and Fred, loved the outdoors. On Skye they could run miles through hilly, heathered terrain, under a huge sky, and play near the crumbling Duntulm Castle, built nine centuries ago near the edge of the cliff. Willy raised goats and chickens, too, and of course, a sheep dog and semi-feral cats, highly valued as mousers.
Our little home, called Windsong Cottage, was situated in the extreme north of the island, in North Duntulm, and far from Portree. Our elderly car had to bump along a one-lane road to get there, through scenery that was simply spectacular.
Though isolated, we were rarely lonely. There was always something to do. Mother and David tended their veggie garden and created lovely cottage clocks that sold very well to hiking tourists representing every country on the planet. When I wasn’t there these hikers would often stay the night in my room and wake to a hearty breakfast. Cost: 35 pounds (about 50 dollars.)
I slept soundly every night under a sky that blazed with zillions of stars. Needs were simpler there, tales were tall, and people tended to keep themselves to themselves. Living on Skye was fascinating challenge, even to the natives.
Eventually, my mother and David were unable to cope with the almost constant, piercing wind, and so moved to the west of England to live in its lovely countryside for another twenty happy years.
I still think about Skye’s impressive, fog-swathed mountains, its stark, treeless, hilly meadows scented with heather, and our peat-fueled kitchen and lounge fires, so useful for resurrecting half-dead lambs. They are memories to savor...