Stone Sentinels: Shetland’s Wild Cliffscapes
Fair Isle: The Incredible Lightness of Being
Where silence is the presence of everything.
A landscape shaped by stonewalls, geology, gale winds, waves, stars, and one Scottish Terrier returning to her ancestral highlands.
Share Fair Isle: The Geography of Bliss
I will write the book, here is the blurb:
During the global pandemic, while the world locked down, Ed Reif, Sarah Kennedy, and their Scottish Terrier Skyelark did something no one could have predicted: they moved to Fair Isle - Britain's most remote inhabited island, 24 miles from the nearest land, population 45 - and stayed.
What followed was not an escape. It was a transformation.
Fair Isle is three miles long, one and a half miles wide, and surrounded by the North Atlantic in every direction that matters. It holds 45 people, 1,200 sheep, 20,000 puffins, one famously solitary bull named Carlos - and, for two extraordinary years, one Scottish Terrier who appointed herself Deputy Sheep Warden, Puffin Patrol Officer, and unofficial island nurse's shadow.
Told through the lens of Joseph Campbell's hero's journey, Share Fair Isle: The Geography of Bliss follows three protagonists through their parallel transformations: Sarah Kennedy, who chose service as the island's nurse during a global health crisis; Ed Reif, the instructional designer and world-traveller who became shepherd, writer, and Time Millionaire; and Skyelark MacDoglet, the Scottish Terrier who became La Reina del Perro - earning her crown not in a kennel but in the oldest bullring in Spain.
This book delivers:
- The Geography of Bliss - why bliss is a practice, not a destination, and how a remote island taught three beings to find it anywhere
- The Time Millionaire Philosophy - proven not in theory but in mackerel feasts, blizzards, and nine o'clock amber light
- The Power of Myth made literal - Campbell's hero's journey as lived experience: threshold crossings, ordeals, coronations, and the return with the elixir
- Canine intelligence in the field - the science and philosophy of what a Scottish Terrier knows that humans are still learning
- Island life without the romance - cancelled flights, February blizzards, Carlos, puffin diplomacy, and the particular wisdom of 45 people who chose the edge of the world
For readers of H is for Hawk, The Salt Path, A Year in Provence, and The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry - but occupying a lane none of them fills: the pandemic-era discovery that the most radical act of 2020 was choosing to be somewhere completely and paying attention to it with everything you had.
The Presence of Everything
Silence is the presence of time undisturbed. It is not the absence of something but the presence of everything. Welcome to Fair Isle, Britain's most remote inhabited island.
There is a fundamental frequency for these parts, and tuning in is not dropping out but turning on to it.
Skyelark's Highland Return
One of them being our Aberdeen Scottish Terrier puppy, Skyelark, born in Charleston, South Carolina 10 months ago, January 10th. She made the trek with us to Shetland to frolic on her ancestral highlands.
The Incredible Lightness of Being
Fade In: Bam
Fade in: bam. The incredible lightness of being is present. Skyelark is bouncing on the silage, the wind is blowing strong, and the day is measured in length and width as this pasturing of the soul continues.
Stars, Not Cars and Bars
We are not savaged by cars and bars, just stars, and no light pollution makes communion with the cosmos so pedestrian.
The Privilege of Being Here
We have to remind ourselves of the privilege we experience simply by being here and not over there somewhere else. Our 90 days here have evolved to satisfy our most basic yearnings.
This place sticks to you. It can be felt in the chest. It nurtures our nature. Listening to your inner voice amid the noise of modern life can be difficult. This place makes it easy.
From Somebody to Nobody
You have to be a somebody before you can be a nobody, and we are definitely egoless in this place and I for an island. Check please.