On Wednesday afternoon I went to the freezer room with Alice and selected cuts of venison that had been culled just across the narrows a few months ago. The community doesn’t eat much meat, but when it’s hyper-local and the result of necessary population control for the sake of the local environment, it’s in alignment with the values of the space. To honour that and avoid any waste of the meat, it’s only eaten at community meals and treated as a celebration. As someone who loves to pour love and connection into meals, I was excited to contribute a special meal to the community and that meal required a couple of days to prepare. On Wednesday, I selected and started defrosting the meat and some butternut squash from last year’s harvest. My roommate and fellow volunteer went to collect fresh kale and greens from the garden and I left it all in the kitchen to do its thing.
Meanwhile, I was preparing for another special event; a story night. In addition to the three volunteers, four guests were staying on Erraid and Adam had the lovely idea of putting on a story night. Myself, Adam, and a guest would tell the stories and we would make cocoa that had been brought as a gift to the community. It was my first time telling a fireside story, so while the food was defrosting, I listened to the local myth I wanted to tell and learned it. I rehearsed and meditated on it while the wind blew every possible flavour of weather across the sky.
On Thursday, I went about my tasks of setting the community fires, making kindling, and taking part in the community cleaning hour, then in the afternoon, I gathered spices, ingredients and the big pot from the communal kitchen and took it all back to my cottage, where I’d be making the stew and slow cooking it over night. Putting it all together, I was deeply content; I had music on and was singing my way around the kitchen. I made a second stew with lentils and veggies for the vegetarian and vegan members of the community, then I set the pots to low and went to afternoon meditation, which was also the closing circle for the guests that week.
Story night was getting closer, so I went home after dinner to check on the stews, turn off the veggie one and put the giant pot in the oven to slow cook overnight. Once that was set, I went back to the communal kitchen to prepare the cacao with the guest who had brought it and set up the fire for storytelling. The cacao was strong and mixed with rose, cardamom, chilli, and other heart-opening and warming spices. We all hugged a cup while the stories began. Adam told one he’d written in the mountains in Italy, our guest told one she’d written just a week before on Iona, and I told a story from a long time ago on Skye. It was a truly beautiful night.
The next day, our guests left, wading through the narrows or bobbing along on the trailer, and I spent the rest of the day checking in on the stews, adding spices and tweaking each one while singing over what felt very much like a cauldron. When we sat down to eat it that evening, the stew felt like a culmination of the harmony and connection that had been fostered throughout the week and was the ideal, cozy, warming way to close that chapter.
