☼ Midsummer Musings ☼

Island adventures, stone circles & sunset grasshoppers

So here we are once again, dancing on the eve of midsummer. This time of year is charged with a buzzing, almost frantic aliveness; everything at the peak of its growth. The tangle of weeds and wildflowers have taken over the coastal path, creating towering corridors of alexander, hogweed and sweet cicely. Insects hum in their droves getting caught in my hair and eyelashes on every outing, and the seabirds squall overhead, anxiously guarding their nests. 

Like nature, my schedule has been busy too; full of rapidly sprouting happenings. Like the green growth on our doorstep, projects have been spilling into the cracks of life, hungry and enthusiastic to be watered with my time and attention. Mid-summer can so easily be an overwhelming time, with the long days and hot weather leaving me in a sort of exhausted bombardment. This year however, I’m determined to breathe in a little slower. 

Just a short ramble for today my friends, as I am expecting midsummer guests. Shortly I will fill jugs of colourful flowers and bake Swedish saffron buns, making sure the firewood is stocked for a long day of solstice celebrations.

✧˖° The Bright Northern Isles ✧˖°

The reassuringly sturdy hum of the North boat chugs by the island of Hoy, passing some of the UK’s tallest cliffs on St. Johns Head. I’m heading to Orkney; the windswept and mystical archipelago of Islands which sit at the very North of Scotland. The last time I was here was 3 years ago, having just graduated from art school and promoting the self-publication of my book. Now I’m returning, this time on the eve of the summer solstice to tell some folktales beneath the bright simmer-dim skies.

We filmed our Summer Solstice video at the Ring of Brodgar; the magical and mysterious stone circle, built by the Neolithic people on the islands some 5000 years ago. It’s a popular site to visit, so we took advantage of Orkney’s bright midsummer evenings and arrived to film late in the day as the sun hung low in the sky, flooding the landscape in hues of soft pink.

Save for a few local walkers, we had the stone circle to ourselves. It was a miraculously still evening; rare for such a windswept archipelago, and the air was filled with the gentle song of curlews. There were several moments that night in between camera set-ups that I found myself standing dumfounded at the beauty of it all, and the realisation that this is my job.

This is what I do for a living. Standing alongside ancient megaliths. Telling their story. Watching the sun set slowly over the Orcadian horizon, and admiring the layers of moss and lichen growing on the surface of these stone giants. In a stolen moment between takes, I whisper a silent prayer of thanks into the land, my heart swelling with a sense of immense gratitude.

Photo by SlowPour Studios

Watch our Summer Solstice film here

Orkney, like any island, is a place of contrasts. The next day, after our peaceful evening spent with the stones, winds of 45mph rips through the islands. With its flat, low lying landscapes, Orkney is particularly companionable with wind.

Any more filming is certainly off the cards, as the heady gusts would think nothing of blowing over the camera equipment and ripping through the mics. On windy days like this when there's no hope of escaping the gales, the best thing to do is embrace it, so we drive to the North-West of the island, and wait for the low tide to cross the skinny causeway over to the Borough of Birsay.

Epic waves lash themselves against the cliffs in the distance and we watch Tirricks - the local dialect name for Arctic Terns - swoop gracefully overhead as we demolish Tunnocks teacakes and a flask of tea. More and more cars arrive at the small car park as the tide lowers, and as the submerged pathway appears from the waters people begin to flock to the tiny island. The wind is relentless, battering us as it rushes in from the West Atlantic. If we lean our bodies into it, the strength of the gales holds us upright; our jackets flapping in the breeze like sails.

We scale the hill towards the lonely lighthouse, the only building on the small island, except for the stone bothy used for sheltering folk who accidentally end up stranded on the island at high tide. From the lighthouse sharp cliffs fall away into the churning sea below, and puffins meander from their grassy burrows, poking their heads out to survey the human visitors. As we stand on the edgelands of the rocky outcrop, the winds seek out every crack and crevice in our clothing; blowing into our eyelids and tangling our hair. It’s not a day for staring wistfully into the distance for too long.

Some Windy Orkney Snaps

The small things amidst the big things

𓆤⭒𓆑⭒𓆣⭒𓆨⭒𓆦

On a hot, sticky day in early June, I sit in my studio feeling utterly overwhelmed by it all. 

Deadlines and a mammoth to-do list sit staring at me from my open diary, and the news pings yet more and more depressing updates at me from my phone. There’s a tiny boat on the Mediterranean Sea, sailing under great threat towards a death-stricken community, hoping to allow a tiny piece of humanity to break through the barrier. Not to mention everything else. Police brutality. Wild fires. You name it, it’s all getting to me today. 

I close my laptop, abandon my devices and drift like a homing beacon into my garden. On a day like this, busying my hands and quietening my mind with the joy of mundane tasks is the only tonic. I pull up weeds, harvest some peas, check on our seedlings and water the wildflowers. My head is still clamouring with the raucous of bad news; all lining up in a queue to throw themselves at me one by one. I pick up the watering can with a heavy chest, then stop in my tracks as I spot something sitting on the green plastic surface; perfectly still, an Angle Shades moth. 

I find myself just staring at it transfixed for a while, holding the watering can up close to admire its complex shapes and earthy colours. Almost immediately after I put it down, gently easing it onto a patch of overgrown grass, I spot another. A scalloped oak-moth this time, huge and clumsy and it emerges from a little nest beneath the wildflowers. I crouch as low as I can to watch without disturbing it, hanging my head in the tangle of growth. From down here, the wildflower patch looks like a forest, towering tall with a purple flower canopy. 

I commit fully to this new angle and lie down in the long grass, resting my head sideways to stare into the tiny forest. The wheat and grass stems transform into tree trunks, and the flowers become colourful behemoths of life. Woodlice beetle around on the soil, a spider wanders through, and honey bees hum noisily above. I let myself get lost in this tiny new world I’ve discovered; one normally invisible to me beneath my enormous human feet. I observe the inhabitants of this world; creatures who have found a safe home because I’ve let the grass grow long and wild in places. Slowly, gradually, the stress of the day begins to melt from my mind, as I lie like Gulliver amongst the Lilliputians. 

Then something quick darts across the forest, and catches my wandering eyes. It pauses just long enough for me to double-take, and question if what I’m seeing is real. A pink grasshopper? Am I really seeing this? Sure enough the lurid pink grasshopper hangs still for a moment, as if it knows it's being admired, then hops away behind a rock. 

“WHAT?” I cry out loud, having a delayed reaction to this unlikely bedazzled visitor. 

I haven't seen it since, which led me to wonder if I had imagined it. So I googled it and, according to this BBC article, pink grasshoppers can rarely be spotted thanks to a bizarre genetic mutation. Rather ironically, the article also explains that they don’t normally survive long, as their colour makes them easy for predators to spot. Poor pink grasshopper. Perhaps that explains where it's gone. 

My adventure into the tiny world of insects had hushed my mind from its frantic overheating. It was oddly reassuring to know that these little pockets of life are thriving despite all that goes on in the world & our media. It might seem simple, small, mundane and not altogether very interesting, but who knows when a pink grasshopper might surprise you, and jolt you back to life when you need it most. 

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Wishing you all a very bright and magical midsummer lovely humans. I’d love to hear how you’re spending your summer solstice in the comments below 𖤓 Please do share!

Speak soon,

Morvern ✧˖°