The Geologic Fault

That man is little to be envied, whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona.

––James Boswell quoting Dr. Samuel Johnson, Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, 19 October 1773

The sublimity of most northern landscapes can overpower a lover of wildflowers like myself, but not Iona. It is the most colorful island I have ever laid my eyes on, even rivaling the tropics. The sky is usually several shades of dark blue mixed with gray swirling clouds. The sea varies from sapphire to green, and often can show several bands of it at the same time. The sand skirting most of the perimeter of the island, except for the southern side facing Ireland, is a bright white. It is impossible to walk anywhere without encountering the many verdancies of heather. The blossom of this ubiquitous flower is too small to be noticed from a distance, though close up it tinges the path in delicate pinks and purples. Strewn everywhere on the beaches are thousands of stones of various sizes cast in reds and creams and deeper reds. In the sound between Iona and the Isle of Mull, only a fifteen-minute ride by ferry, there is an ancient geological fault line, which is why the rocks are so distinct. It makes sense to me. The difference is obvious, even to the untutored eye.

Iona is a small island, only about three-and-a-half–miles long and a half mile at its widest point. One of its claims to fame is the site where in a.d. 567 Saint Columba arrived on the southern tip, now called St. Columba's Bay, in the company of a small band of Irishmen with the intention of founding a monastery. They were successful, building their earthen-floor beehive cells near the present abbey on the east side of the island a quarter of a mile north of the ferry dock. You can still see the foot-high run of earth that had formed the original wall of the monastery. This site has the longest continuous occupation of any religious institution in western Europe, although at present it is owned and used as a conference center by the Presbyterian Church of Scotland rather than as a Roman Catholic abbey. Iona's other claim to fame is that somewhere along the depression of what was once a road leading up to the main abbey are the graves of many of the kings of Scotland, although none of them is marked. Macbeth is buried there. He lies among at least fifteen others beneath what is now called The Street of the Dead.

It is not certain to me what St. Columba's specific destination might have been as he set forth from his native isle of Ireland. He was a discredited warlord who had recently converted to Christianity. The Celts have a tradition in early Christianity of being gyrovagues. That is, many monks would, on sheer shamrock impulse, just hop in a coracle, a cone-shaped vessel made of wood framing and grease-sealed hides, without any steering mechanism, not even a paddle, and just let the wind, the waves, and the sea currents take them whither they would.

I doubt that this was true of Columba, who set sail with a dozen fellow missionaries. But he could have shared the gyrovague's utter disregard for any kind of personal glory deriving from his deeds. In a sense one could say he very well might have been a "fool for Christ," meaning he had renounced all concern for notoriety or fame that history imparts. And yet, beyond any aspiration of his own, he became famous for founding the island, not only populating it for the first time, but doing so with religious fervor. His felicitous contribution to our collective image of this holy site, coupled with Macbeth's infelicitous exception to it, form two of the cornerstones that have put Iona in Fodor's travel guide. King Oswald's and Bishop Aidan's extension of...