Nothing is convenient about living in an ancient stone cabin on an empty Scottish isle. Dinner is handy—if you grab a fishing pole and catch it. The house is warm—if you stock enough fuel gathered from the back woods. Shopping? Forget about it. You'll have to cross to the mainland.
But, for city folk, life on the island, near the Isle of Skye, has its blessings, though it may take a process of reckoning to discover them.
“We decided that it might be good to pursue something, which I saw was in my blood, which is working for an estate again,” Mrs. Petersen, 41, from Edinburgh, told The Epoch Times. “A lot of people don’t realize that these jobs exist anymore.”
Nowadays, you apply online.
The estate was hiring, and a position of caretaker in a stone cottage on a deserted island was open. The Petersens jumped on it. “We made the decision to do this only a matter of hours after they wanted it,” Scott Petersen, 46, said. “I have to admit, I was skeptical.”
An area known as the last rainforest of Scotland lies in the Hebrides isles, and when the Petersens arrived, they said it was like the Caribbean, with turquoise clear waters and balmy breezes caused by the Atlantic jet stream. Not your typical Scottish highland lodge.
With not even a dirt road, the Petersens walked in with their two sheep and cat to find a stone cabin they believe dates from as early as 1745. “It was very tired inside. You can tell it had a lot of different personalities of people living in it,” Mrs. Petersen said.
Obviously unhappy with the sooty old plasterboard of this century, they would strip the interior right back to the original stone—as if to reach back in time and reconnect with old spirits.
And there were other blunders of modernity that plagued the otherwise cozy cottage, such as dampness caused by the pouring of concrete, which retains moisture. That all had to be replaced by lime mortaring.
They soon discovered the source of much of the water was a spring from the hill behind the cabin. They would rubberize the entire lower stone wall and reinstall the original flagstone floor.
One day, Mr. Petersen was touched by a moment of kinship with the past as he worked in a trench behind the house to keep away the water. Looking here and there, scattered about, he saw the old tools.
“You immediately get a connection to the people that lived here in the past, even though we have no idea who they were, but these are the tools that they used, and this is the work that they did, and it’s still visible now [after] all these centuries,” he said. “Things like the drainage trench at the back of the house, which was pickaxed by the people that built this 350 years ago.”
Another time, Mrs. Petersen was assisted by a neighbor, a stone mason, to install a slate window shelf. Suddenly, as the furnishing was fitted perfectly, it dawned on her that they were now part of the story of the house, no longer strangers to it.
“I’ve always loved history, and I’ve always loved Scottish history, but I feel like by embracing this lifestyle, we’re honoring our ancestors and are saying we’ve not forgotten you,” she said. “When we’re restoring the cottage inside and we’re taking it back to the bare stone, you think about the men who laid those stones.”
Island life the Petersons found to be rather the triumphant perfection of inconvenience.
“I used to be the type of woman who would go to the supermarket every day for our meals, but now it has to be sort of well planned in advance,” Mrs. Petersen said.
Amazingly, the old isle has power—though it’s frequently out, certainly not to be relied upon. Mrs. Petersen has been meaning to bring a “sparky” in to get the wiring fixed.
But despite all the hassles, there are blessings to be found.
One of the biggest lessons cottage life has taught them has been the rhythm. There are no alarm clocks on the isle. There is a natural ebb and flow to everything.
At first, Mr. Petersen arrived at the isle carrying many modern woes and found he was constantly battling with what he calls “the rhythms of the island.” He has since learned to let go and follow that rhythm—to become one with it.
Overcoming one’s worries begins by just looking out the front door and seeing the handsome highlands across the water, but once you start living naturally there—working the land, working to live, singing all the time—soon even the deer come to know you.
A kinship descends from a timeless place.
“We have a lot of deer that naturally live on the island,” Mr. Petersen said. “And they now are used to us, and we feed them by hand, and it’s just this connection whilst they know you’re not going to harm them.”
“I always had an appreciation for them, but it gives you an even greater appreciation,” he said, adding that this goes beyond just the deer. “You start to feel that oneness with everything.”
But the greatest reward has been, “to be honest,” Mr. Petersen said, “not having to deal with other people—it’s not necessarily in a negative sense.
“Living in a town or a city, there’s so many other people to be taking into consideration about what you’re doing.
“Here there’s only two persons.”
