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When Tamsin Calidas left London to live on a croft in the Scottish Hebrides, she was idealistic and totally ignorant about farming. Years later and after facing and overcoming significant struggles, she feels in harmony with nature, wildlife, and the beauty of her island. Calidas sits down with host Lale Arikoglu to chat about working the rugged landscape and her new book, I Am an Island.
Lale Arikoglu: Hi. I'm Lale Arikoglu, back with another episode of Women Who Travel. We often chat on the show to intrepid explorers and at other times to women who start new lives far from home. Today's story combines exploration with a bold move from London to a tiny island in the Scottish Hebrides. Tamsin Calidas has lived in a remote cottage for over 19 years. She's experienced tragedy, injury, and isolation, but also the regeneration power of nature, all of which is charted in her recent book I Am an Island.
Tamsin Calidas: I Am an Island is... It's just using the island, honestly, as, as the place where I'm telling the story from, but it- it's really, um, a metaphor for all of us in life. It's the human experiences that we each meet and which test and, um, what do you turn to when that tide draws back and you're really left alone and, and, and really facing your own existence and, and what it's all about and why am I here and what am I being called to do, knowing that that tide will return, that everything in life is circular, but asking it in that moment of profound challenge, "Who and what am I going to fall back on when everything that I would normally rely on or depend on, even the most basic structures, have all been pulled away?"
[singing]
LA: The island is off the northwest coast of Scotland. It's 15 miles long, sparsely populated, and it only got electricity in the 1970s.
TC: There's a lovely map at the front of the book which shows the contours of the great panoramic of mountains that surrounds the island and which makes it quite so visually spectacular and with such a, um, diverse abundance of wildlife, so it is a small island that's set in the sea with mountains in view right the way around with far-reaching views to the outer islands, so we're up in the west, northwest, and the great glen is visible that's like a very ancient volcanic kind of fissure, and so the island itself is an anomaly in its own landscape. It's this incredible limestone little outspur in quite barren ground around, and that also makes for great contrast. So I love that as well because it doesn't actually fit in with its own landscape around, almost like a life that has had to transmute and adapt to being there.
[singing]
LA: When we spoke, it was mid-September just as the seasons were beginning to turn.
TC: It's really the first big day of autumn, it's pretty stormy outside, and temperatures suddenly dropped to about eight degrees and we've had winds and the seas are just throwing themselves at the cliffs and the shore, so, um, I'm sitting in my kitchen and the stone walls are about three foot thick. This time of year, you generally kind of put on a soup to, to, to heat up overnight and then you just keep that in the slow cook, um, for the day and, and always have a, a, a kettle on, on the stove just warm so you can just put that on the fast boil if, if you need it.
These are stones that have been prized up out of the ground from the 1800s by hand, and there's no cement or concrete. It's all the original, uh, limestone and the limestone, uh, filler that's been used, so it's... When it's cold outside, often you feel that chill indoors as well so today [laughs] I'm wearing three jumpers, couple of tops underneath, I've got my work boots on actually still and my thick socks and I've got one of those snoods around my neck. So we've not yet hit autumn proper. I've got lovely thick oak boards on the floor and in years past when I've been lambing and, and still helping others with their lambing and, um, raising up newborns that need extra help, often it's drying fleece and if I'm working with wools over the winter and carding and getting things ready for spinning then you've got the lovely rich scent of lanolin on your hands, and yeah, vegetables from the summer hanging up to dry, perhaps onions, off the beams and, um... So it's quite a composite dense, rich mixture of, of the land, I suppose, i- in, inside.
LA: A move can sometimes be as much about what prompted the departure as the choice of destination. Why do we choose to leave, and what's the vision of the new life that a change will bring?
Can you paint a little bit of a picture of where in London you were based and what that place was like?
TC: So London was fantastic and I adored being there. Um, I was very fortunate. I ended up in Notting Hill Gate, and it was before the film came out so it was a very different environment, I guess, to how it is now. It was very undiscovered and there was a real buzz going on. It was the time of Britpop and, you know, we were all so young and just hitting London and finding our niche and just loving life and living life, um, out loud. And I guess my environment went from BBC and publishing and then into advertising, and I, I ended up doing a lot of shoot location work out in America so I was traveling and moving around quite a lot and, you know, the world felt so big, um, being so young and, and meeting so many different communities, um, across the globe.
Um, and then one day I had a huge car smash and that really stopped me in my tracks and it was a very frightening time and very sobering time because, you know, at that age you feel that you're invincible, you've got your whole life ahead of you, and I really had to learn to walk again and to really get basic function. I was really fascinated by the therapies and natural medicines that had helped me an- and actually enabled me to avoid surgery, and I just thought, "Well, that's helped me so much. I would love to learn how to share that with others." And so I just went back to school and retrained and studied and specializing in trauma work and things like that, so I then ended up in a GP practice and, um, doing a lot of outreach stuff then, and as a result of that I had to move communities.
By this stage I'd met somebody that then became my husband and, yeah, we were living in a community that we didn't really know. We decided to settle there. It was somewhere where we thought we'd be having family and, yeah, and then suddenly that community changed overnight. You know, at different times in London communities kind of change and, uh, social political things happen and the whole, the whole atmosphere can just suddenly shift, and we were right on the edge of, uh, a, a fresh, uh, gang turf and our place just became a kind of hit place, if you like. It suddenly became not safe to walk out even in the daytime. It certainly wasn't safe to walk out at night. Neighbors were getting knocked down, our place was smashed into, um, you know, firecrackers and all sorts of things, um, put in through the front door. I mean, it got really extreme.
LA: So you and your partner at the time, you decided that you were going to leave?
TC: We just decided that, you know, now is the time and to really find somewhere where we could bring our life and our work much more closely together and live much more closely to the land and actually be in an environment that would nourish and nurture us and have nature as its focus. We looked all over the place. We looked overseas, we looked in Europe, but my childhood, a lot of that was spent up in Scotland really in remote places, and my husband was Scottish so the two kind of threads came together so we thought, "Let's go and look." And so one day we just got in the car really early in the morning and, and just drove all the way up and, um, ended up in Oban.
LA: Oban is the gateway to an archipelago of Hebridean islands. It's a coastline town popular with tourists and home to a ferry hub with routes spanning out to islands close to the mainland and to those like Tamsin's that are more remote.
In retrospect, did you have any idea what you were getting into? Do you think that you went into it with your eyes wide open or, you know, kind of totally closed?
TC: I guess most people, you know, in their early 30s, there's so much hope and there's so much optimism, and with that there's this beautiful blend of naivety and, um, just thinking, "You know, wherever we go is gonna be okay." The actual croft and the cottage and it had a barn and so much potential, you couldn't have at that stage, you know, even have bought a tiny, tiny, uh, single bed studio for close to what we were putting down as our outlay, partly because it was in such poor condition, but, you know, it was 22 acres of just beautiful albeit unloved land, but there was so much potential there so really once we got to the island and found that place, you know, that decision was made pretty fast.
The first morning that we woke up there, we weren't actually in the cottage because the cottage was still uninhabitable so, um, it was a different sort of peace waking up at first light in very early May, that beautiful early spring Hebridean gloaming light in the morning where the stars are still out and you've got this lemon apricot sky and just a trace of the Milky Way passing over... beyond over the sea and all of the birds calling. And we're lying in this very dilapidated, broken old caravan, um, which leaks so we've buckets there, you know, ready, ready for when the summer breaks, but fortunately the summer doesn't break for two or three months. Um.
LA: [laughs]
TC: And looking out of these, um, you know, steamed up windows, condensation, and just seeing the cottage there in this field and just thinking, "Wow. We're here. This is, this is our life."
LA: After the break, despite her lack of experience in farming Tamsin discovers she has a natural way with animals that's crucial to her survival on the island. Clearly there was no coming back and it sounds just extraordinary, and you moved into something called a croft. I'm familiar with that word but I think for a lot of listeners that might seem totally foreign. What's a croft?
TC: So a croft originally was a very small strip piece of grazing where when the islands were much more densely populated, it enabled families to have their own means of growing their own, um, food and also keeping very basic livestock, but at the... Right at the beginning, you know, never having kept livestock before, it was a prerequisite, um, mandatory to having a croft, and y- you don't just take it. You have to actually apply for it and to be approved to take it by what was called the Crofting Commission, which is a very old, um, system that vets your application and sees if you are going to be stayers, what you've got to contribute and what you've got to offer, and why that particular piece of ground should go to you. So, um, we were, we were very fortunate. You know, we were, we were granted that permission, and so the first thing we had to do then was to go out to the local, um, auctions and markets and, um, we brought back cows, um, with calves at foot and, and having to learn how to handle those and, and, and what to do and so on. And then, and then, um, in, in one of the later sales, um, getting, uh, a flock of sheep because the cows and the, the sheep together really gives that best working of the ground so that i- it's, it's really kind of producing as, as, as it should.
LA: In 2011, Tamsin's marriage fell apart and a series of injuries made working the farm almost impossible.
TC: Just as things are being built in nature, actually within the human relationship things are starting to fray and break down. [inaudible 00:14:53] we get to a point where it really gets to a point of no return, the whole situation implodes and explodes, and it's, um, pretty dramatic. I'm suddenly listening to the exhaust of my ex's Land Rover just driving away and I'm lying on the floor, and I won't go into how or why 'cause there are different reasons as to why this happened, but I have, uh, two broken hands and I'm, you know, suddenly on my own and thinking, "How on earth am I going to run this place by myself?" Also because it's very, very rare that, um, a woman would stay behind. Um, you know, it's a very male, very patriarchal farming world.
LA: Your decision to continue on alone wasn't necessarily sort of received warmly or I guess was treated with curiosity or confusion, which must have added a whole other layer to the difficulty of that time. I'm really interested to know, though, that there were... You know, the one thing that remains consistent in this is nature and your natural surroundings and the wildness of where you are. How did bonding with nature during this time strengthen you and what did nature teach you about how to cope?
TC: I was so grateful to have the land around me and also the animals that were needing my care because, you know, they didn't have anyone else to look after them, and when we go into that act of giving to others, it's amazing what kind of strength that, that yields back, and I think that's really what the nature taught me was when you give, you receive. It's just so simple, and often, you know, beautiful, uh, realization that every problem holds its own solution.
LA: She relied on her Highland mare Fola and sheepdog Maude to help her, but it became harder and harder to make ends meet. A turning point came after a series of power cuts.
TC: The meat had gone off in the freezer and, uh, just a whole series of circumstances meant that there just was not the means for food, and so I had to turn to the land and, and one of the first things I noticed was how the sheep were being quite selective in what they were eating even in a, you know, square foot, and I started to identify the different plants that were there and then from there realized that, actually, it's not just grass. There is just incredible nutrition that's there even in this very small square foot.
LA: Here's a moment from I Am an Island where Tamsin describes turning to the land and foraging in order to eat.
TC: Some worries keep you awake at night. Hunger is one. One day standing in the garden, I hear my stomach churning and cramping with hunger. I reach out and snap off a small handful of greenery. I find myself wondering how it would taste. "Here," I offer one to my dog, who's watching me closely. She sniffs it, licks it inquisitively and then turns away as if affronted, the look in her eye one of disgust. "Oh, come on," I tell her. "It's not that bad." And then I look over my shoulder quickly and back the other way because it feels somehow savage standing in my garden cramming raw leaves into my mouth. It takes a surprisingly long time to eat a leaf picked fresh off a tree. The thick sycamore leaf is the toughest, the beech is soft, ruckled, with tiny hairs like a downy skin, whilst the hawthorn is as coarse, textured, and dense as the silver birch is thin and slippery cool. Tasting those first few mouthfuls feels strange, like an illicit secret in my mouth, but it's more than that. It is a relief. I'm ravenous, desperate for food.
Back in my kitchen, I crush hawthorn leaf with a stone pestle. It tastes nutty, sharp, tangy when it's pulped into a pesto with freshly picked ground cobnuts from my hazel trees. Some days I forage for nettle, chicory or the young shooting tips of birch, beech or oak that can be eaten raw like salad leaves. After season when berries are scarce, wild raspberry leaf is high in nutrients, rich in natural iron, manganese, and calcium. In the autumn, I go to the woods and short-cropped hills for chickweed and puffball. Each day I give thanks for what I have to eat. I make my own rituals, filling the emptiness with meaning that seems to offer renewed hope. It is strange to feel stronger, for my skin to toughen and hands to roughen as I learn not just how to live, but how to survive. Wild foraging teaches you so much more than simply what you can and cannot eat. It teaches gratitude, resilience.
[singing]
It's different to, I suppose, how I would wild forage now, which is as a supplement to and something that I love to do and enjoy doing and, you know, is, is important and really part of the fabric of life here. Thank goodness for that over the last few years with the pandemic as well. But, um, at that time it really was to eat, to live, to eat, um, so that was an extraordinary realization and, and suddenly realizing that this huge landscape that was around that perhaps at times felt overwhelming, that perspective shifted and it became incredibly nourishing and supportive and an anchor for me.
Instincts guide us to where we need to look and how we need to look, and one of the biggest learnings is actually switching off that thinking part of the brain and starting to use your full acumen of senses that, that we dull down, we deaden down in our modern world.
LA: Coming up, Tamsin on raising wild birds who accompany her around the farm.
TC: I raised a, a beautiful rook over the, uh, springtime that was raided from its nest just as a tiny nestling and a buzzard had come in and literally lifted it out of the nest, um, away from the parent birds, away from its siblings, and normally that- that's just a very sad end to the story. But incredibly the whole colony, the whole rookery, mobbed this bird of prey and it dropped this young chick and incredibly it didn't die when it hit the ground and, um, I had a call from a neighbor to say, "Can you help because we know that you know how to do these things?" And so that youngster has been living with me inside the house since March and, and just recently has just started that proper process of rewilding and joining the bigger rookery out in the trees.
LA: Rufi the rook in conversation with Tamsin.
TC: I'm feeding her at breakfast. I've done it like a wild prayer and blessing and there's some nice sounds going on with that. We're actually conversing and she's eating. I've not caged her at all, and, uh, tha- tha- tha- tha- that's been the most beautiful thing and, um, so I call her and she calls me back, the same with the other little birds. You get to know their voices distinctively 'cause just like, just like us every single bird has its own unique voice and you, you start to be able to recognize that amongst all the birdsong that you hear.
I raise wild birds every year but each year, each one is different and, you know, very, very intensive, particularly at the beginning where you're giving 10 minute feeds. But yeah, that's, that's just been a really beautiful experience, but it's meant that I haven't been over to Oban in, in a long time so, you know, feeling very happy and very homebound at the moment and, and you realize that right here we've got everything that we need.
LA: God, that sounds magical. What a scene with the birds and also, like, incredibly intense.
TC: Yeah, and they can... Over the years, they, they, they show you such tenderness and how complex their social interactions are that they share with us as well. You know, a starling that I used to have would fall asleep in the nook of my neck and every night before she slept she traced my cheek with her beak. They are very responsive, beautiful, intuitive, compassionate, and wildly intelligent creatures. We have so much to learn. LA: You can follow along with Tamsin's upcoming winter on the farm on Instagram. TC: You know, you've got Christmas and you're walking out to the, uh, church service which is in this very old, um, 11th or 12th century church and the bell is rung... Uh, still there in the bell tower, and it's rung when everybody's standing inside and everybody's just there with a candle-lit lantern.
LA: I mean, you talk about it and clearly you love that island and the life you chose really deeply.
TC: There's a point in all of our lives where, you know, life, life can meet you unexpectedly or perhaps with a, a, a force of motion that, that you're not quite ready for, but, you know, it's always teaching you something very, very precious, I think. You know, those times of difficulty are really there as beautiful situations of growth, and it's only when we dare to put down roots and to start to sow into that bare ground that really you're, you're really planting hope for your future.
And that might not come immediately, but it's so important to do the sowing, to do the blessing in the time of... Those hard times of challenge and difficulty because the very act of doing that gives back so much, and what I'm suggesting is that we are all islands until we meet that point of really tapping into that greater, uh, source of presence, and it's only when we start to really
yield to that and to really surrender to that greater power and not try to work everything out in our own will and in our own timing you realize that everything is there with a much greater patterning and everything is happening for you and you are exactly where you need to be at exactly the right time.
LA: That is so lovely, and I'm going to be taking that away with me and thinking about it for some time. Very last final question, for listeners who don't know Scotland and don't know Western Scotland, if they were to go what, what could they expect? Are they going to have starlings nestling in their necks?
TC: I think it takes time to adjust to how we share our energy, and that does take time. It takes time to shed that static and to really set down your roots and just to yield into the rhythms that are around you, so I'd just encourage anyone wherever you are, if your energy's right wildlife will approach you, and the fastest way... It's something that I write about in my second book that's, that's coming out soon, is how the swiftest way to access that beautiful intimacy with the wildlife is through a state of meditation or prayer because it's that that is the universal language that we all share, and once you're in that zone and once you're starting to live in alignment within that zone, just watch and see the magic that happens with the nature and the wildlife that's around. I just invite you to try that.
LA: I love that.
[singing]
Thank you to Roseanne Reid for her song “Couldn't Wish More for You.” Next week we're revisiting one of our favorite episodes. Ava Chin, author of Mott Street, takes us on a journey through New York's Chinatown to discover generations of family history. I'm Lale Arikoglu and you can find me on Instagram @lalehannah. Our engineers are Jake Lummus and Gabe Quiroga. The show's mixed by Amar Lal. Judith Kampfner from Corporation for Independent Media is our producer. See you next week.
