This seems like a nice place to be!

Sharon Pottinger’s visit to Stroma was a ‘compelling reminder of the dangers of trying to preserve a community’.

WE have had a flurry of visitors and special occasions including a wedding dance, golden wedding anniversary, harbour day and two very special boat trips, all of which have been competing for space in my little conversational corner.

As I caught my breath and began sifting through those events, two phrases came to mind. The first is from the bard himself, “Oh wad some gift that God might gie us to see ourselves as others see us.” The other came from one of my visitors: “This seems like a nice place to be.”

Robbie Burns’s lines come from a poem in which he is reminding us, as he so often does, gently or poignantly, to be less judgmental or more humble. I am stretching that sentiment to suggest that it includes all those opportunities for looking at ourselves from a slight distance.

Having to apply (or reapply) for a position involves putting ourselves at arm’s length from our everyday world in the process of filling out applications and updating curriculum vitae. Having visitors can have a similar effect.

I hope I never take the beautiful landscape and vital community we have here for granted. But it is all too easy to slip into the world of messages and appointments and let the landscape slip into the background until visitors are expected and we are faced with the “what can I show them in just a couple days that will reward them for the long trip here and allow us to reconnect and find our shared interests in this new place”.

WE came up with some expected and unexpected activities – who knew the children would love pulling wool off the fences? – and enjoyed getting reacquainted.

As we stood at Brough Harbour Day sharing a beefburger and listening to the music, my friend said simply, “This seems like a nice place to be.” When unpacked, this comment told me a lot both about myself and this place we call home.

Since the speaker was an American midwesterner like myself, it was her acknowledgement that she could recognise something familiar and comfortable in a place so remote from her own experiences spent on prairies and cornfields rather than rocky northern coastline.

Especially under the benign skies of near record temperatures and enough breeze to keep the midges away, this is a beautiful place to be.

Frolicking on the beach and learning about strange creatures as well as wandering through ruined castles certainly made a great trip, but my friend and her family were enjoying the company and the music and being woven into the fabric of everyday life here. Visitors come for the people.

I am sure that some people come for surfing or fishing or archaeology or to enjoy a week watching the waves from a temporary home in a caravan or a tent, but even those people who come here for an activity will enjoy their time here infinitely more if they feel part of a vital community.

If we want people other than our friends and family to come, then we have to do more than substitute the word “visitors” for “tourists.” Having originally come myself as a tourist, I feel a discomfort whenever I read or hear about tourism as an industry or how much money tourists contribute to our economy. It renders hospitality, which is such a key part of the character of our community, as a commercial transaction.

As part of the visit, I found myself back on a bus tour of Orkney. The bus driver was unabashed about saying that tourism was the second largest contributor to the Orkney economy and thanked folks for coming.

Having said that, he spent time talking through the course of the day to nearly each and every one of his passengers individually – not just responding to questions but engaging them in a genuine conversation.

ANOTHER phrase comes to mind, “come for the whatever, stay for the crack”. We say this almost without thinking about it as we linger over shopping or some task or chore at hand, but the sometime slow pace is an essential part of what makes us enjoy living here.

We do ourselves a disservice if we wait for visitors to get out and enjoy this landscape or if we think of it as a commodity to be packaged and preserved and rolled out for tourists.

Music at Brough Harbour Day helped provide a warm welcome to a community event.

I am chary about writing about local history because my own knowledge of it will always be so limited, but my visit to Stroma was a compelling reminder of the dangers of trying to preserve a community. No doubt there is more to the story of Stroma than I will ever know or fully appreciate, but I was told that the island’s lonely fate was finally sealed when there were no longer enough people left on the island to pull the boats up when they needed to be sheltered from storms.

As with many historical items passed along to me, I took that as a metaphor. An essential part of the character of Caithness is a pride in looking after ourselves. Caithnessians tend to give more to charity than other regions of Scotland but also more often specify that it stay here.

When my friend described this as a nice place to be, she recognised another element known well to midwesterners – we also tend to look after our own and take a pride both in our willingness and our ability to do so. Snowstorms and tornadoes reflect a different physical geography, but the same social geography. Midwesterners accept the premise that part of the price we pay for living in a beautiful landscape is being there for each other when we need shelter from the storm.

That same connectedness forged in the snow gets to celebrate with classic events like barn raisings and house warmings and no doubt my friend recognised that as well at Brough Harbour Day.

With her children and some of their classmates, she has an orchestra dubbed “Bodacious.” She found a book of ceilidh music on our Orkney trek and when she gets home, she and her orchestra can add some new tunes, along with their memories, to their repertoire.

Do you want to respond to this article? If so, click here to submit your thoughts and they may be published in print.