anthony galvin

There’s always another island.

Looking west from Haunn, Mull I can see the island of Coll across the water. The weather always looks slightly better over on Coll, the sunset brighter, the beaches a golden streak across the dark island.

And beyond Coll, the Uists, connected, almost to the conjoined isles of Harris and Lewis. There is always another island. 

Which creates a slightly uneasy feeling, an unrest. A glance at the ferry times, thinking about the logistics. In the same way some people feel compelled to cycle up alpine passes, bag Munros or tick off indian provinces, the very existence of un-visited Hebridean islands creates some kind of implied experience vacuum. 

Until perhaps you reach St. Kilda, the edge of the world, just Greenland to keep it a distant company. 

But this is really a flat earth approach to island hopping, where the horizon represents the edge of the known world. A spherical planet surely means that there is always another island, near, far or unreachable.