No wolves at the Monastery door.
How the safety of a small island perhaps accelerated our disconnection with nature in the modern world.
One of the reliefs of small island life on Iona in the 6th century would definitely have been the lack of predators. At the time of Columba and his crew’s departure from Ireland, wolves were a normal part of life in both Ireland and Scotland. It wasn’t until 1680 - some say into the 1700s - that the last wolf in Scotland was killed. In Ireland it was that Cromwell fellow who put bounties on the heads of wolves (and priests and rebels). Brown Bears also roamed Scotland until the 10th Century.
There would obviously have been the odd invasion of singular swimmers perhaps attracted to the scents of settlement. But, small island life would have brought security of foodstuffs and little people and inattentive scholars from most things besides other humans. This kind of security would have been a relief and the peace of it would have been palpable.
Yet, with the clarity of hindsight, having the beginning of the age of the written word and creation of a regional (global to them) centre of learning and theology set in an ecosystem missing one of its key reminders of connection to the natural world—that something might kill you—feels like another important split. The lack of having to consider the natural world while capturing into writing the new one and the introduction of a new god not birthed in the landscape around them at all was a significant deviation from life as it was known.
How easy did it become over time to then aspire to a life without a bear or a wolf to protect yourself from? How unremarkable to lose all those predators from the British Isles entirely without really noticing that we were getting further and further off kilter with the world around us? The more I spend time imagining this landscape the more apparent the significance of the unravelling that it began appears to me. A fissure and isolation that requires so much repair. Not just the loss of the erased women and their knowledge, but of our very place in the ecosystem of our planet.
And yet there are deep wells of hope. The fissure was never complete. There have always been those amongst us who pulled us back into relationship with the world around us. They have inspired and called us back into relationship with all around us since the first warnings of a split. They are calling loudly still. I am hopeful that each thought and exploration of this story is a tiny stitch that I can add to the rejoining.