neither sea nor land

An extract from our Davaar book today – pre-orders close tomorrow!

When is an island not an island?

When it is connected to another landform by a doirlinn!

Doirlinn is the Scottish Gaelic word for a tidal causeway. Elsewhere in Scotland, you’ll find doirlinns built up from stones and boulders, or which have, over time, developed into sandy, beach-like structures. Davaar’s doirlinn, however, is a long, curved shingle bank that sinks away from view and re-emerges with each low tide.

Neither sea nor land, solid or liquid, the doirlinn is a bridge forever vacillating between two elements. Twice daily, the sea moves forward; twice daily, it sinks back. As water swirls around the island’s rocky coast, it breaks the land down and throws what remains about. Gradually, through attrition, repetition and the slow processes of longshore drift, the doirlinn is formed and reformed. Restless, impermanent, equivocal: neither sea, nor land.

Each day’s the same: the tide pulls back, the doirlinn appears, then disappears.

Every day is different: the tide moves forward. Yesterday’s shifting stones are not today’s.

From the high rock of Davaar, the doirlinn casts its outstretched hand west and south towards Campbeltown. In the salty crook of its arm, it lays out a daily offering of spoots and whelks, mussels and buckies. At the tide’s margin, in the sunshine, kelps, wracks and carrageens shudder, shrink and hiss. A woman with a rucksack bends to gather cockles. The still air shimmers with the cries of whimbrels, curlews, oystercatchers. 

Kintyre folklore tells of the local kanejach, a ghostly, wailing creature, whose disturbing cries were sometimes carried on the wind around Davaar. All over Scotland, the kelpie or the cointeach is regarded as a harbinger of death; and certainly, upon the doirlinn, lives have been lost and vessels wrecked or grounded. For earlier populations, perhaps, Davaar’s imaginary, spectral kanejach was a useful way of demanding care in matters tidal and meteorological, prompting human respect towards the doirlinn’s unstable, fickle land-and-sea scape.

In stepping out upon the doirlinn, you surrender your body to its caprice. Nothing here is certain. Its shape redrawn with every tide, the shingle shifts beneath your feet like the moving floorboards at a fairground. Whatever the weather is on land, in this salty, half-way, almost-sea space, everything is more intense. You might set forth from Kildalloig in glorious sunshine but, after fifteen minutes, see a black cloud over Arran, swinging westward. In five minutes more, the storm has reached Davaar, and thirty seconds later you are pelted with crazy, stinging hail. With the wind in your face, you steady your back in case a freak gust casts you sideways; you hunch your shoulders, lean into the weather, pick your way across the causeway. By the time your soaked and ragged figure reaches the island, staggering ashore, the wind has dropped and the sun is out again.

At many historic moments, for several different cultures, the shifting, tidal spaces of the causeway have inspired ritual or pilgrimage. In Japan, for example, the doirlinn connecting the island of Shodoshima is known as the Angel’s Road. At low tide, couples queue to walk, hand in hand, across this narrow strip of sand that bridges the Seto Inland Sea. Crossing the Angel’s Road together in this way is thought to bless a union, a practice which is often commemorated by leaving a documented declaration of love upon the island. At Davaar, too, the pilgrims come—friends, couples, families—walking together, making their own rituals.

Above the doirlinn the huge bulk of the island sits, bathed in its seasonal colours: gorse-gold in April, lush bracken-green in June, pastel-washed by heather as the September air begins to cool. On a still day, at high tide, Davaar adopts a weightless, elegant appearance, suspended above the water’s surface as if it were a giant lily. But, as the tide recedes, the lily unfolds into a great, unwieldy, lolling creature, its head reclining towards Achinhoan, hauled out and dozing like one of the seals below the lighthouse.

Twice daily, the tide plaits itself together, binding the doirlinn.

Twice daily, the braid unravels, reveals the nether and the neath again.

Ground and water, rolling back, rolling forth, constantly in process.

Forever itself, but never self-identical.

An always in-between space.

Neither sea nor land.

words by me. Photographs by Tom.