Drops in the ocean... by Joan Haig

 

I’ve just spent a few glorious days on the Outer Hebrides. I was with two energetic eleven-year-old boys, so there was a lot more sand tunnelling and body boarding than writing and reflection.

But it’s impossible not to think about big questions when you are perched on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean. I thought about life and nature, the power of water, the universe. And I thought about colonialism and the climate crisis.

I spent formative teen years living in Vanuatu – a chain of islands in the SW Pacific that was named the New Hebrides by Europeans when they first ventured there with their trading ships and Christian missions.

While the Scottish islands are wind-battered, mostly flat and bare, Vanuatu is a tropical paradise with palm groves, volcanoes and coral reefs. But the white-sand horseshoe bays and glittering turquoise breakers make sense of the comparison between two sets of islands at opposite ends of the globe.

 

 

North Uist, the Hebrides

My current WIP is set in a fictionalised island in a hazy time setting, and the island is about to be hit by an enormous storm. But, in the real world, the story is far worse. The climate crisis is NOW.

In June I hopped on to a seminar as part of the United Nations Oceans Conference in Lisboa. The representative from Vanuatu, Christopher Bartlett, made it clear that the country needs urgent help to prevent and repair damage caused by a crisis which its population is not responsible for creating. Vanuatu has declared a Climate Emergency. Ocean acidification is destroying coral reefs. Cyclones are more frequent and less predictable. Sea rise is causing irreversible damage. In Bartlett’s heart-breaking words, “Vanuatu and our people are out of time.”

Out of time.

I thought about that line several times as we explored the puddled inlets and lochans of the Hebridean island we were holidaying on. I gave up my writing dream at university because I didn't think it was enough. I didn't think literature was powerful enough to make positive change in the world, to save the world. Stories were drops in the ocean. I know I was wrong about that; I know writing IS action. But every so often, my faith in stories falters.

On our last day we sat writing stories in the sand. Stories to be washed away and told on the tide. I hope my story will one day reach the shoreline in Vanuatu, and that it won't arrive too late to make a difference.