Status Updates From Sightlines

Ronan's name is known, but the names of those buried under the turf are lost, save for one tantalising detail, which Martin provides: the Rona people, he says
'took their surname from the colour of the sky, rainbow and clouds'.

'He thought he was doing them a favour, but these new houses had windows. If the glass broke, well, where do you get window glass, here? They needed paint... timber... but how d'you get timber where there's no trees...?

The ice at bottom of the core is 20,000 years old. They were bringing the deep past out of its silence, waking it up to ask it about change. There are people who crawl about on glaciers, measuring speeds and surges, and the calving of icebergs. Together they bring worrisome news from the farthest remotes. I sail on the surface of understanding, a flicker here, a silence there.

The northern lights may or may not make sound, but I believe they kept us awake. All that energy. In the morning, over breakfast, some people agree, but others scoff at this idea: they are eighty miles up - how can they keep you awake? They are just charged particles, trapped in the earth's magnetic field. True, but aren't we all?

Polly comes up beside me and pokes me as best she can through all the layers of clothes. With head tilted back she whispers, 'They are changing without moving, which is true, and I fall to wondering if there are other ways of changing without moving. Growing older perhaps, as we are. Reforming one's attitudes, maybe.

The old sagas say that the Viking settlers of Iceland took ravens. Out of sight of land, wallowing at sea, they would release a raven and watch it climb the air until it was high enough to sight land. Where the raven headed, they followed in their open boats. Maybe ravens had brought them here, too, in their Greenlandic voyages, a thousand years ago. A thousand years. The blink of an eye.