Stu Jenks: Fezziwig Photography, Music, and Writing: Callanish

We ain’t in Skye anymore.
The Isle of Skye doesn’t have many trees but it has some here and there, and the hills of Skye are covered with heather and grass and life.
Not here. Not on this part of Lewis. Rock and peat and more rock. I ain’t complaining. Sort of like the desert at home, but with water. OK, it’s nothing like home, but it feels like home.
I’m beating feet toward Callanish. Left the ferry town of Tarbert thirty minutes ago. Looks like the turnoff to the town of Callanish is just a few miles up ahead. Then, if the map is right, I got about a fifteen-minute drive and I’m there. Hard to believe I’m really this close.
I’m rushing, for the Sun looks to be only an hour from setting and Christ Almighty, It’s only 3 o’clock. I’m guessing I’m farther north than I’ve ever been, including my time as a child in Upstate New York. And it is October after all. But Good Lord.
A sign points toward a paved road t-ing into my road from my left. ‘Calanais: 12’ it says. That’s it. Man, I’m close. I think. I’m thankful too, that Calanish in Gaelic is close to how it reads in English. Can’t be said for other places on Lewis, for the main city of Stornoway to the north is spelled Steronabhigh in Gaelic, that's pronounced Stornoway or close to it. And unlike Skye, where the traffic signs are in both languages, only Gaelic is printed on the highway signs here. This is a Gaelic land with a Capital G. A mix of Norway and Ireland as much as it is of Scotland and England. I take the left in my black VW and head due west.
It’s cold and moist with a wondrous peaty smell. A dark rich fragrance, like centuries old dirt. I smile. That’s exactly what peat is. Rotting vegetation slowly compacting over a thousand years, not ever really dry due to the poor drainage of the land and the constant moisture in the air. It’ll stain your shoes like nothing else, and heat your home as good as coal. Once it’s dry that is. There, just off to my right is a tower of peat drying, stacked like a Boy Scout’s crisscross log fire, six feet high. It’s said that how they found the Standing Stones of Callanish was when digging peat in the 1850’s. I love the smell. Stirs something in my DNA almost.
Lots of clouds, but no sign of rain. Big clouds, moving fast. Wind at about 20, 30 miles per hour. Again, there was wind on Skye but nothing like this.
I check the odometer. Wonder if I could miss it. Map says they’re on the left near the village of Calanais. I crest a hill and there, I see them. A good two miles away, on the top of a flat hill, like fingers coming through the earth. The Standing Stones of Callanish. I need no sign, no point of interest plaque. I’ve seen photographs of these boys for 25 years. It’s them. I cry.
I take my foot off the accelerator and look in the rearview mirror. No cars. Haven’t seen a car in 15 minutes. I look through the windshield at the stones in the distant. Time to get down to business and take some serious shots. Now how do I get up there?
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I’ve been shooting for hours now. As the sun set, after the sun set, with the Brownie, with the 35 mm. Long lens, wide angle. Rollei on a tripod. I touch the stones from time to time but I’m more busy than spiritual right now. I tried some hoops dances at dusk but I doubt they’ll work. It’s almost completely dark now yet the Full Moon lights some of the eastern sky. A few more hoop dance shots, I think.
“You have it in the can,” says the quiet still voice within.
I know, I think, but I just want to be sure.
“You have it in the can,” it repeats.

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It is so cold. Probably not freezing but close. Add the heavy moisture in the air, the 40-mile an hour wind and my desert-thin blood and I can’t get warm. Granted I have on my heaviest North Face jacket and a wool scarp tightly wrapped around my neck two times, but I brought only my Krispy Kreme baseball cap with me from The States and left my wool boo boo hat at home. A big mistake.
It’s been hours since I arrived, but it feels like only minutes. Things in slow motion and fast at the same time. Hard to explain. I’ve been here on a little while and forever. My arms are sore from swinging the metal hoop with the battery powered Christmas lights on it. A good sore, like lifting artistic weights. Something like that. I can’t think anymore. I only see and that not so well right now. I’m hungry but I don’t care. Get some Gorp in a minute. Another hoop dance, another smoke, now a walk back to the car eat for some food, to drink some IRN-BRU. I’m cold but I don’t want to leave. I can’t leave. I’m in my body but I'm not. I’ve felt like this in the past but nothing this strong. Usually I’m hot and sweaty not cold and damp. I don’t know. I don’t know much of anything right now. I think all my shots suck. I’m starting to feel depressed or something like that. I don’t know.
After a bite of food in my car and a smoke, I walk back to close the shutter on Hoop Dance number seven. Angle number two. I’m sure it sucks.
“It’s in the can,” the quiet voice says again. Number four for the voice and the can statement.
“Really?” I say to the wind.
“Really,” it says.
I’m done and as soon as I say to myself ‘I’m done’, I feel a light in my bones, the depression lifts, the Full Moon is brighter. What’s this all about?
Then I get it. For hours, I’ve been in my head, looking at angles, composing, taking images more out of fear of not getting the image, than in the hopeful joy of the moment, shooting at Callanish. Living in future time, as Ronn would say. And as soon as I decided I was done, I’m back in my body, my soul’s humming loudly in my ear and I’m seeing the stones as if for the first time.
I walk up to a favorite stone of mine. I may have been out of my body but I ain’t blind. I’m quite familiar with this boy, but I haven't really made friends with him yet. I walk up to him and notice the worn spots in the grass at his base. I ain’t the first one. I put my back to the stone and lean against him. The roar of the wind is mostly gone, blocked by his mass. I close my eyes, and adjust my feet away from him so I can put more of my weight against his surface. I hear the wind, whistling off the other stones. I open my eyes and look toward the collapsed cairn to my right, the loch to my left, the village of Callanish right in front of me, its edge just a few hundred yards from the low fence that surrounds the stones, the fence that keeps the sheep out. A car motors down the lane, its headlights noticeable, not blinding, very far away. It turns into a driveway and even though I can’t hear it, I know, the driver has turned off the engine. He turns out the headlamps. He exits the right side of the car.
He’s home.
So am I.

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I’m so tired. My eyes cross as I drive. Got to stop. I pull off onto the shoulder of the road just a few miles out of Stornoway and check the map. The road back to Callanish is just up ahead but I don’t remember many pulloffs on that road and no way I’ll make it back to Callanish to sleep in its parking lot. Im just too tired. The little village of Liurbost is just a mile or so ahead. Maybe there I can get some rest.
The single track to Stornoway was fun. Lots of sheep blocking the road. Tall grass growing in the peat on either side of the narrow piece of asphalt. Slow going but a good slow. Drinking Diet IRN-BRU, eating peanuts, life is good.
Stornoway was hopping. High school kids everywhere in the streets. The beginnings of the Celtic Singing Competition. Charles Murray was there somewhere but I didn’t stop and look for him. Already tired and I had no plans to get a room tonight. The plan from the start was to sleep in my car tonight. Saw some real live trees in Stornoway, trees mentioned in the tourist literature. They are proud of the trees they planted a hundred and fifty years ago. I made a big loop through town and got back on A859, heading south. Callanish still called and the broch near the village of Carloway, north of Callanish looked interesting too. The plan was to sleep near them. I ain’t going to make it.
Heading through the dark night on A859. The waxing moon mostly hidden in the clouds. Some houselights up ahead. Must be Liurbost. A short row of houses appear on my right. Maybe a half dozen and a small store. Reminds me of little towns in the Northern Neck of Virginia. Off to the left is a wide paved turnoff next to a sheep ramp. Perfect. I put on the breaks and pull into it. I see street lamps across the way that may get in my eyes as I try to sleep. It’ll work though, I think. I get out and take a pee in the grass. Wind’s not bad, but it's still really cold. I shake and get back in the VW. Take off my shoes, lower the driver’s seat to almost level, crack a window, pull my North Face over my head and try and get some sleep. Within a minute, I’m gone

I’m awakened by a car whizzing by. I check the clock in the car. 2:00 a.m. I’ve slept for 3 hours. I raise the seat and look around. Do I want to stay here? I don’t think so. Before I put on my shoes, I get out of the car, walk over to the sheep ramp and take another piss in the grass. Back inside, I put on my shoes and take a long draw of the Diet IRN-BRU stuck in the console. God, that is good stuff. I start the car and put it in gear and get back on the deserted road. Friday night in Liurbost. Everyone’s asleep except for a tourist from Tucson.
Within seconds, I see the road to Callanish and take a right. I’m pretty awake but not all together. At least I’m not driving cross-eyed. Minutes pass. BBC Scotland plays on the car’s radio. My constant companion for a few days now, not just playing Celtic reels and pipe marches (which they do) but great folk music from Aberdeen and Glasgow and from as far away as Austin, Texas. Right now, it’s sad slow songs in Gaelic.
The turnoff for the Standing Stones is up ahead but I don’t take it. I stay on A858, and the road to Carloway. My map says the broch there is just ten miles away. I’ll make for that and sleep there, I think. I’m getting tired again. Hope I can make it. The Moon is out again, its light reflecting off the lochs that surround me. Literally, small and large bodies of water are everywhere.
The road unexpectedly turns to dirt. New road construction. This’ll keep me awake. Soon, I see a sign saying ‘Dun Carloway’ that way. I take it. Up a hill and I see another sign, and a small parking lot. I pull in. Built into the hill like a hobbit hole is the visitors’ center for the Broch at Dun Carloway. Just a wee place. Must only hold a person or two. I scan the parking lot. Just me, but I don’t feel comfortable about sleeping here. Don’t know why. Don’t question it. I just back up and get back on the rough paved road. Looks like it goes down toward a small loch over there, after some houses. I put it in first and head down the hill.
I pass a couple three houses and continue down near the shore of this good size lake. A bit of land is off to the west and then I see the large Loch Roag, then more land, miles away. Just then I see a pull off near what looks like a dinghy tied up near shore. I park the car and get out. Need to take another pee. I walk just off the road and do my business. As I walk back to the car, I stop at the boat. The Moon’s back out again and I can see it’s just a small two man rowboat loosely tied to a thin stick stuck on the bank. The wind rocks the boat slightly. A piece of hardware gently clangs inside the hull somewhere. The lake water laps against its side. I first wonder if this quiet cacophony will keep me awake and then smile, and realize it’ll probably put me to sleep.
I get back in the car, light a smoke, and crack the window. The hardware, the water, the wind, it’s all good, as the kids say. Off come my shoes, back goes the seat, and eventually I put out the butt and hit it.
In an instant, I’m out.
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I’m awake and a bit cold. What time is it, I think? The car clock reads 6:15 a.m.. God, I slept good. I don't sleep this well at home, waking up briefly a couple times a night in my own bed in Tucson. Feeling groggy most mornings. Not this morning. I feel wonderful. I've slept three more hours but it feels like a dozen.
I hear the boat clanking off to my right through my slightly cracked car window. Smiling to myself, I think maybe I need a tape of the sounds of this rocking boat playing in my bedroom at home to help me sleep.
I find a Diet IRN-BRU, ice cold, behind my seat and crack the top. A loud hiss comes from the tall plastic bottle, exhaling the fragrance of Quinine. I remove the cap and take a very long draw.
“Ahh!” I say,
“Sweet Jesus, I love this stuff!”
I take another draw off the soda and light a Camel. No coffee or tea this morning. Sun’ll be up soon. I look out of my driver’s side window. No moon. All cloud. Or at least it’ll be light, I think. I start the car and turn the heat on high. I shiver a bit. Inhale smoke deep in my lungs and exhale. I can see my breath. We ain’t in Tucson anymore. I sit in the idling car for a good while, both of us warming up. The broch at Dun Carloway is just a mile up the hill. I want to be nice and toasty before I get out on this frosty morning.
Ten minutes later, I’m cruising up the hill, leaving the little loch and the wee boat behind. Dark homes are on my left. A dog barks. The sky might be getting lighter to the east. Might not. Soon, I’m parking in the gravel lot for Dun Carloway. The hobbit house visitors’ center is still dark. Feeling better, warmer now. I grab my Pentax 35mm with the 28 mm lens, pocket my smokes, exit and lock the car. Coat, scarf and baseball cap. My uniform in the Hebrides. Sure miss my boo boo hat though.
I stop at a plaque near the hobbit hole and read about Dun Carloway. Seems that a broch is a large Iron Age stone house, this one having been built around 2000 years ago probably by the Picts, though no one knows for sure.
(I love the Picts, the truly indigenous people of Scotland. The Celts sailed from Ireland to Scotland in the 5th Century AD it’s said. Some legends have it that the Celts didn’t conquer the Picts, just merged with them. Others say it was bloody mess. I like to dream that it was a peaceful coming-together. More on the lines of each group falling in love with ‘The Other’, not killing the Stranger. A red headed Celtic woman seeing a muscular man with blue paint on his face and finds him more attractive than the freckled faced guy next to her. And visa versa for the guys. Then again, I am a hopeful sot at times.)
The original use of the broch is speculated as being a refuge or defensive structure to protect people and livestock during attack. Attack from whom it doesn’t say. By the time of the Middle Ages, the rich of the area were using this broch as a show place, a sign of their wealth, a fancy house, to rub in their poorer neighbor’s faces I suppose. Dun Carloway is at least three stories, says the sign, with the first floor for the animals originally. Wow, that’s big. I look up the trail but I can’t see the broch but I do see the trail. I check the eastern horizon. A bit more gray over there. Dawn is coming, yet slowly. Total overcast. No moon, no stars. I shoulder my Pentax and head up the trail, with my mini Maglite in my hand. I don’t really need the flashlight but it’ll help me not stub my toe and fall on my ass. That’s a good thing.
I reach a gate in no time. I pass through the gate and look up ahead. Is that it? Can’t tell. Still dark. I slowly walk up the trail and then I notice a hill to my left and then suddenly I realize it isn’t a hill. It’s a house. My mouth drops open. Though its in partial ruin, the broch rises at least 30 feet over my head. I scan the structure with my flashlight, seeing tight stone masonry work.
“Wow,” is all I say, over and over again.
I find the front door or what’s left of it and climb to a grassy landing ten feet above the ground. Behind me, the large remaining wall of the broch looms, sheltering me from the wind, that seems to be increasing with force as the dawn approaches. The eastern horizon sky grows lighter, from black gray to mid gray, but not light. My guess no sun today. I sit on the edge of the northern wall and dangle my feet over the side. I place my camera in the short grass behind me. I light a Camel Filter.
Directly in front of me is The Sea. Not a loch. The Sea. The Atlantic Ocean.
I feel like I’m in a movie.
I drag hard on my smoke. I lay back on the grass behind me, my legs still hanging from the wall, and I daydream about The Picts.
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“Annie, it’s me,” I say into the phone.
“Where are you?” she says.
“I’m in one of those little red phone booths in the middle of nowhere just down the road from Callanish. How are you?” I say.
“I’m OK. I sent an Emil to your hotel in Skye. Did you get it?”
Shit. I did but I didn’t call her when I got it. It was regarding my mother’s upcoming colon surgery. That Mom is fine but in quite a bit of pain and going under the knife tomorrow.
“Yes, I did. Damn, Annie, I’m sorry. I should have called you but the time difference is weird and then I just forgot. What time is it there now?”
“1 a.m.”
Yikes. That means it’s 9 a.m. here. Man, it still isn’t very light yet.
“Did I wake you?
“No, I was up.”
“Annie, I know you were envious that you weren’t with me here, and that you were angry I didn’t ask you to come along.”
“I’m over that,” she says. From the sound of her voice, she ain’t completely over it.
“Yea I know,” I say, “But I’m calling just to tell you that some how, some way, I going to bring you back to Scotland someday. I’m having the best time. And I wish you were here. Callanish was absolutely amazing last night.”
“How’d it go, the shooting?”
“OK, I guess. Hell, I don’t know. My little inner voice is telling me it’s fine so I’m just trying to trust that. But I don’t know. I’m telling you though, I really want to bring you here to Lewis and Harris and Callanish. You would just love it, Annie.” She would.
“We’ll see,” she says. Annie stopped being my lover six months ago. Probably as good an answer as I’m going to get out of her. I don’t blame her for not being enthusiastic about a future trip. She’s the one that came to Skye a few years back. She’s the one that helped me get off my ass and finally go to the homeland. Can’t really expect her to like it when I decide to go on an artist’s sojourn, without her. Then again, I don’t feel that guilty about it either.
“I even pay your way, “ I laugh. She laughs too. She know I don’t have a pot to piss in, nor a window to throw it out of.
“Well, I gotta go, Annie. This call is costing a fortune and I gotta do some things before I get back on the ferry to Skye.”
“Well, be careful.” Through it all, we still care a great deal for each other and she really means it when she says be careful.
“I will, honey and thanks so much for letting me know how Mary is doing,” I say.
“No problem. I miss you,” she says.
“I miss you too.”

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This time I don’t park in the visitors’ center’s parking lot. I kinda know my way around here now. This time I’m parked at the edge of the fence that encircles Callanish I. (There are at least two other smaller sites of standing stones. Callanish II and III). I put out my smoke, grab just the Pentax and get out of the VW. May not even take a shot. Just had to come back is all.
It’s completely overcast. Looks like rain. Winds have picked up since sunrise. Back to about 30 mile an hour I bet. Cold but good. I pull my baseball cap down low on my head and make my way to a tiny gate in the fence. A hinge is bent a little but I get the gate open eventually and enter the large area of stones.
I stroll around slowly, in a wide circle and look for a shot I may have missed. I see one. I take it. I complete the circle and put down my camera bag. I walk up to the stone fella I leaned up against last night.
“Hey guy, how’s it going?” I say softly to the megalith.
I turn around, plant my feet, and fall back against his flat tall surface.
Feels like old times.

Ferry leaves at 1:30. 11:00 now. Need to be in line by 1:00. An hour’s drive to Tarbert. Gives me a hour to play around on the Isle of Harris just south of the ferry port.
As I drive up a hill, I see Callanish III a few hundred yards over there. I smile and decide I’ll save that for next time. When I bring Annie. That way, there’ll be something that both of us can experience for the first time.
The clouds have lowered, misting a bit. Not rain, just mist. Good Scottish weather.
“Aye,” I say out loud to the interior of my car.
I turn on the windshield wipers to ‘intermittent’ and head down the damp two land blacktop.
A half hour out of Talbert, I need to pee. Drinking a lot of IRN-BRU today. Even drinking some of that spicy Ginger Beer I bought in Inverness. Found a few cans of that rolling around under the passenger seat. Man, I got a pee. I find a pulloff and take it. No traffic, anytime today really. I can piss anywhere I want.
I get out and the wind about blows me over.
“Damn,” I say into the howling wind.
I walk up a bank and down the other side, so I have a little bit of privacy. Off to my right, a wide valley falls away. Way over there is a smooth thousand foot high treeless ridge. Look like a man lying down. A lot of space between me and that ridge. A light mist is in the air, not enough to pepper my glasses but enough to chill the air.
And the air is flat out moving here. Guessing around 40 miles an hour or more. Steady too. Not just gusts.
I put my back to the wind and unzip. Momma didn’t raise no fool. I know better than to piss into the wind. I begin to do my business when I suddenly I feel moisture on my face. I look skyward. Is it starting to rain, I think? I shrug and look down at my pee. With my legs slightly apart, the wind’s now hitting my urine with full force, redirecting it so that now my piss is traveling parallel to the earth. Since my body is creating a bit of vortex, my piss makes a big looping circle, and is now hitting me squarely in the face.
I laugh out loud. I stop peeing and the rain stops. I start peeing again and the rain begins. I stop pissing and I wipe my face.
“Fuck a duck!” I say. I’m still laughing.
With my dick still in my hand, I walk over to the high bank I just crossed, place my penis a few inches away from the earth and finish urinating.
No rain’s flying in my face now.
Thing is I just can’t stop laughing.

http://www.stujenks.com/gallery/megaliths/callanishandcroft.html

http://www.stujenks.com/gallery/megaliths/dawnatcallanish.html

http://www.stujenks.com/gallery/megaliths/callanishandbrownie.html

http://www.stujenks.com/gallery/megaliths/hoopdanceatcallanish.html

http://www.stujenks.com/gallery/megaliths/fourstones.html