SUNDAY, OCTOBER 20 , 2019. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ EE F3
and colors, depending on the
dominant flower, from scarlet red
(corn poppies) to glowing yellow
(charlock) to violet blue (bugle).
During my visit, the fields were a
study in yellow and white, the
latter provided by the wild carrot
and bladder campion.
The most astonishing aspect?
In a world where industrialized
agriculture has obliterated eco-
systems, the machair relies on the
crofter’s gentle, 1,000-year-old
system of agriculture. Crofters,
who raise cattle and sheep, have
their allotted croft but graze their
animals on common land so they
can move the livestock between
pastures. During wildflower sea-
son, the livestock are inland, and
the grasslands are used to grow
Hebridean landraces of barley,
oats and rye next to and among
the meadows. In fields that lie
fallow for two or three years,
different wildflower communi-
ties thrive.
The grains are harvested in
August after the wildflowers have
dropped their seed. In winter, the
animals graze on the meadows,
preventing more aggressive
plants from overtaking the wild-
flowers. The crofters have also
traditionally harvested seaweed
to process as an organic fertilizer.
Crofting has historically been a
hard way of life, and I don’t want
to romanticize it. But it is tempt-
ing to feel there is much to learn
in these pretty meadows about
sustainable farming in an age of
ecological calamity.
“We have a rare example of
habitat enhanced by human in-
tervention,” said Stewart Angus,
an ecologist with Scottish Natu-
ral Heritage and machair expert.
(I spoke to him on the phone
later.)
As I rounded the bend in a
coastal farm track, I noticed a
distant cluster of people — a flock
of birders? As I drew closer, I
could see a group of about 20
individuals listening to a tall
guide with a close-cropped gray
beard, a brimless woolen hat and
binoculars. That turned out to be
Martyn Jamieson, a naturalist
and a part-time field officer for
the RSPB. He was explaining how
certain Hebridean cattle breeds
were hardier than the beefier
French cattle some crofters pre-
fer, and could be left outside all
winter. Jamieson is a transplant
from Liverpool, England, as well
as a crofter on the island.
The machair is a natural locale
for birdwatchers. The nectar-rich
plant community is a magnet for
insects, including the now-
uncommon great yellow bumble-
bee. The insects, in turn, support
a rich bird population. Among
the special birds we saw over the
next hour were Arctic terns,
which will dive-bomb your head
if you get too close to the nesting
areas; and oystercatchers, noisy
wading birds with pied plumage
SEE SCOTLAND ON F4midst of the North Uist machair,
in the Balranald Nature Reserve.
I took a wrong turn, and by the
time I arrived at t he RSPB visitors
center — a tin-roofed brick hut,
basically — the building was open
but empty.
I set out southward along the
nature trail, a track between the
dunes and meadows. The white
beaches and blue sea beckoned
from breaks in the dunes, but
they would have to wait. I wanted
to immerse myself in the flowery
meadows.
Some of the wildflowers were
familiar — clover, buttercups,
daisies, wild carrot. Others were
not so: the golden plumes of
lady’s bedstraw, or the yellow-
and-white buttons of the kidney
vetch, or a tiny lemon yellow viola
hiding within the tapestry. If
South Uist is the exemplar of
machair, North Uist is surely not
far behind. The coastal meadows
seem to stretch for miles.
But it wasn’t the rarity of the
flora that was the point; it was the
idea that a habitat had evolved to
nurture a plant community
where each wildflower had found
its niche. The resulting dense
coexistence and biodiversity of
the flora was something the
smartest eco-gardeners around
are only now striving to replicate.
My horticultural friends would
go nuts to see this, I thought.
The wildflower season on the
Uists typically starts in mid-June
and runs until mid-August, but it
goes through its own sequenceThe Uists are not as well-
known as other Hebridean is-
lands, such as Harris and Skye,
but they have their own claims to
fame. The 1949 comedy “Whisky
Galore,” a big film in postwar
Britain, was based on Compton
Mackenzie’s book of a couple of
years earlier, which, in turn, was
based on the true story of a
freighter — the SS Politician —
storm-wrecked on Eriskay during
World War II. Its cargo included
thousands of bottles of whisky
destined for America. A good
number of them were “salvaged”
by the local population. Who
could blame them — it’s not every
day you discover a washed-up
Politician full of liquor.
The other story is how Bonnie
Prince Charlie fled after the Bat-
tle of Culloden from the British
forces (the 1746 battle signaled
the defeat of the clan-backed
effort to restore a Stuart monarch
to the British throne). Despite a
large price on his head, the prince
was protected by the islanders.
On Uist, Flora MacDonald was
immortalized as the woman who
shepherded the prince to safety
by ferrying him to Skye dressed as
her maid.
As I sat in the cottage reading
about this, it made the adventure
more fun, but it wasn’t g etting me
any closer to the machair. Then I
chanced on a well-creased bro-
chure that spoke of a weekly
nature tour from the field office
of the Royal Society for the Pro-
tection of Birds. This is in theThe Uists — South Uist, Benbe-
cula, North Uist and smaller is-
lands, all connected by cause-
ways — stretch about 60 miles
from top (Berneray) to bottom
(Eriskay). You see visitors in
camper vans and hardy souls
cycling — not so pleasant when it
turns wet and windy. I also broke
bread at a campground with a
hiker who was following the Heb-
ridean Way (10 islands, two fer-
ries and 156 miles). Even in a car,
it takes longer to get about than
the map suggests: The roads are
narrow, and if there is an oncom-
ing vehicle, you or the other guy
has to pull over in a passing place.
People drive kindly, as if they
know one another.
Forty minutes later, and on the
other side of the island, I found
my way to the stone and thatch
cottage, the traditional abode of
the Hebridean crofters, or tenant
farmers, and renovated as a holi-
day cottage by Ronnie and Hele-
na MacPhee. After I arrived, Ron-
nie came down from the house up
the hill to say hello, chat about
the cottage renovation and ex-
plain where things were. That
was the first and last I saw of him.
One way to describe the cot-
tage is “cozy” — it only has three
rooms, one of them the narrow
bathroom. The small living space
functions as a kitchen, dining
room and den. This crampedness
is fine, I like such spaces, but it
helps if you think of the cottage as
an Airstream trailer with walls of
stone and a roof of dried reeds.gardener. How could I not see its
handiwork?
The same conditions have cre-
ated similar plant ecosystems on
the west coast of Ireland, from
Galway up to Donegal, the other
Western Isles of Scotland, and the
Orkneys and Shetlands. Scotland
is home to two-thirds of this
unique habitat. James told me
the whole west coast of South
Uist was prime machair. (Purists
drop the definitive article in def-
erence to its Gaelic origins, de-
rived from the word for plain.)
To get there, I had to make my
way on the last mainland leg from
Fort William to the port of Mal-
laig along the A830, the “Road to
the Isles,” where the enveloping
countryside changes from the
broad glens south of Fort Wil-
liam. Here the road cut closer to
the hills, which are high but soft
with moss.
Mallaig is a small maritime
community of slate-roofed, ter-
raced houses sitting above a
breakwatered harbor. I noticed a
Norwegian-flagged trawler in
dock, a reminder that this is a
corner of Britain with close his-
torical ties to Scandinavia going
back to the days of the Vikings.
The ferries that are the life-
blood of the Western Isles are
operated by Caledonian
MacBrayne. CalMac vessels have
distinctive black hulls and red
stacks with rampant lions but
vary in size, depending on their
mission. One of CalMac’s biggest,
the MV Lord of the Isles, came
chugging into Mallaig harbor just
30 minutes before departure as I
waited in ordered rows of parked
cars at the ferryport lot. By then,
it was late afternoon, and the
voyage would take most of the
evening. In early July, I add,
evening is a state of mind. It stays
light until 11 p.m.
The first phase of the 3½-hour
voyage saw the ferry threading its
way between Skye to the north
and Rum to the south, the latter a
sparsely populated isle known as
a haven for seabirds. This watery
part of the world reminds you,
constantly, that nature holds do-
minion here. The sea, dark and
rarely placid, is deceptively vital.
From the ferry I saw pods of
striped dolphins, but it is the sea
birds that seem to rule the waves.
I detected gannets, various
gulls and terns, but sadly no
puffins, those garishly beaked
beauties of the North Atlantic. I
did, though, see many shear-
waters, a bird that skims and
wheels just above the rolling
waves. The bird is black above
and white below, so that it ap-
pears alternately black or white,
depending on its gyrations.
The sun was lower but far from
setting when the Lord of the Isles
eased slowly into the quay in
Lochboisdale, the main ferry port
on South Uist.
SCOTLAND FROM F1
A gentle agricultural system led to flourishing biodiversity
PHOTOS BY ADRIAN HIGGINS/THE WASHINGTON POST
TOP: A stone-and-thatch crofter’s cottage in South Uist. ABOVE: The crofter farming system has led to fertile ground for plant life.100 MILESTHE WASHINGTON POSTLondonDublinEdinburghSouth
UistNorth
SeaCeltic
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hanne
lIRELANDFRANCEParisN. IRE.Shetland
IslandsSCOTLANDU.K.ENGLAND
WALESIt wasn’t the rarity
of the flora that
was the point; it
was the idea that
... each
wildflower had
found its niche.