Above: Tràigh an t-Suidhe (Shore of the Seat) Iona. Mixed media on 16×16″ wood. Rose Strang 2026

There’s something so compelling about wave watching. It’s as though each successive wave corresponds to your own heartbeat. To me there’s nothing more meditative. So it’s fitting that Tràigh an t-Suidhe (pronounced tray an too-yeh) means Shore of the Seat; a place where Calum Cille was reputed to have sat quite often, seeking peace from the busier parts of the island. It’s at the northernmost point of Iona.

I’m not sure if he’d have been sitting on the low sandy bank that’s slightly raised and sits under the higher grass bank above (sheltering anyone from winds in the south), or if the seat refers to Carraig Feannig, the rock of the hoodies (a type of crow) in the middle of the bay.

Wherever he looked out, I imagine he felt the same awe we feel watching the incessant, impossibly green waves. Impossibly green thanks to the white sand of the Hebrides, the machair water as I’ve heard it described.

There were two ways to be a martyr in the pursuit of following Jesus and Christianity according to the Desert Fathers, whose influence stretched from around 300AD to Calum Cille’s day (around 530AD): red martyrdom and green martyrdom.

One meant death sacrifice, to be killed; a bloody sacrifice. The other was to live somewhere deserted, green, remote, away from the usual creature comforts, in other words the remote green spaces of the Hebrides. These places were seen as equivalent to the desert in which Jesus was tested. Nowadays we immediately think of sandy expanses, but desert means deserted in ancient Latin terms.

All very grim. I suspect Callum Cille deeply valued those times he spent gazing in wonder at the waves. I remember how I visualised the waves of Iona in my younger years when I felt troubled, or sitting on the dentist’s chair, as I was today, having a wisdom tooth extracted. I imagined myself in the hull of a wooden rowing boat being rocked gently in the calmer east coast sea of Iona.

Kenneth Steven, a writer and poet who has written extensively about Iona and the Hebrides in the last few decades expresses the wonder of waves beautifully:

I went naked into the water, ran deep into a green
Through which I was translucent. I rejoiced
In something I could not name; I celebrated a wonder
Too huge to hold. I trailed home, slow and golden,
Dried by the sunlight.

(Excerpt. Island, by Kenneth Steven)

Blessings of the Iona waves to Marc, who died in 2022. He worked as a volunteer at Iona Hostel, and used to bathe on Tràigh an t-Suidhe everyday, whatever the weather, at dawn. He’d collect seaweed to roast in the oven, and we ate it by the tonne! Rest in peace, Marc.

Here’s my photo of him from the hostel window, coming back from Tràigh an t-Suidhe in the morning.

Marc, Iona, November 2018. Rose Strang