Expedition to the Marble Quarry

At the beginning of the 20^th century there was a Marble Quarry on Iona.  The marble is a beautiful white with green veins throughout.  The altar and baptismal font in the Abbey church are both made with Iona Marble.  The marble was shipped throughout Europe and the United Kingdom for building.  It closed in the mid 1900’s and was essentially abandoned.  There are pieces of machinery remaining.  The workers created a sea wall with large blocks of marble and granite to keep the sea from flooding the quarry.  The National trust for Scotland is working to preserve as much of the machinery as it can.  The quarry is a beautiful and wild place.  Definitely a thin place. 

Here is the interesting thing.  You pretty much can’t there from here.  Which sounds pretty strange.  It is after all an island.  And a relatively small island.  You can actually stand on a hill on the island and see both the east and west coast.  There is one single lane road on the island, about 2 miles of road.  There is about 2 miles of rocky road, and then the rest is sheep trails.  Interesting thing about sheep, they can walk on just about any surface, and tend to do so in single file, thus creating a trail.  As a human you may or may not be able to follow a sheep trail, and often you don’t know the difference until you have gone a bit farther along a trail than you should have.  The Marble Quarry is not on a road, it is not on a rocky track and it is not really of much interest to the sheep. 

One more valuable piece of information about the island.  It is Scotland.  It rains.  It rains a lot.  I have decided that Iona is simply a tropical island without the palm trees.  And in a lush green hilly place with lots of rain you get bogs.  Imagine marshland with only a bit more rich black soil.  It’s the sort of surface that sucks the shoes right off your feet.  And apparently sheep love them so their trails often go through bogs.  One more thing about a bog, you really can’t judge the depth of a bog by looking at it.

Armed with that information you can now understand when I say Sunday we set off on an expedition to the Marble Quarry.  We went from the village to the bay at the back of the ocean and then along the track to Columba Bay, and then began hiking along the sheep trails.  These were apparently mountain sheep, because we found ourselves walking down the side of a steep hill.  After two hours, including sand, rocks, bogs, heather and hill, we found the Marble Quarry.  It was wonderful.  We climbed on the rocks and sat overlooking the sea.  It was quite a vista.  For our return we decided to walk parallel to a fence line, following sheep track, and discovered bogs of new depths.  But the views were amazing, and turns out the sheep knew a short cut.  Our return took only an hour and a half. 

This is a thin place. 

looking down into the Marble Quarry from the top of the hill

Sea from the marble quarry

Sheep track towards the marble quarry

baptismal font in the Abbey church made from Iona marble

Leaving plans

There comes a sudden awareness that your time on Iona is drawing to an end.  The Wednesday prior to your departure it occurs to you that next week you won’t be saying farewell, but boarding the ferry.  It is a faint and distant consciousness.  However, on Friday at the jetty waving off the guests you realize that you will not be present for the next group of guest’s departure.  Shortly after that at the first of three morning meetings, it will be announced that you are leaving.  You will be asked to tell if you are having a leaving service and what the particulars of that might be.  At lunch on Friday you will be asked to say something to all your fellow staff members.  For the first time since you arrived you will not be able to work on leaving cards, because it’s your leaving card.  

I have two colleagues leaving with me, one from Australia and one from Oregon in the U.S.  We have planned our leaving service and will serve smores (they were a big hit).  I will have Tuesday off this week rather than Wednesday.  I will have a couple of gatherings on Tuesday.  Wednesday we leave on the 7 a.m. ferry.  We are also planning for breakfast in Oban (or the ferry) that includes eggs and bacon.  My two friends will take the bus to the south to visit the Isle of Islay.  I will continue on by train to Glasgow.  One of my cousins will meet me there and I will visit with my Scots family.  

Senior vollie

We had a leaving ceremony tonight.  It’s not anything new, we have one every week for the volunteers that are leaving.  Along with the reality that the people who were here when you arrived won’t be here when you go is the reality that everyone here now has been here a shorter length of time in comparison to you.  You become the “senior vollie.” You don’t so much realize you’ve become the senior person until someone says “you need to show me that before you go.”  And you realize that someone is aware you will depart.  As senior you are expected to know how to solve all problems such as cooking rice for 60 in fewer than 10 minutes, or how to thaw frozen bread quickly without using the microwave. 

During our Saturday tea break which only staff attends, no guests are on the island, we sit in the refectory (dining hall).  It is a quick break because there is so much to get done, but the senior kitchen vollie is expected to prepare a special for tea – like banana fritters or toffee, banana and cookie crumbles.  The ultimate insult would be to serve plan old cookies.  (I am thinking smores.)

This week I become the senior kitchen vollie.  And most of all it means that all the people who have taught me so much in the past five weeks have returned to whatever was their “real” life.  One was headed to a new life as a cook on a yacht.  One was headed to cooking school.  One was headed to a protest rally against injustice to others.  One returns to college to continue her education.  What is means is that I have to know that those I will leave are prepared to be the senior vollie.

This is a thin place.