Hello. For reasons I won’t bore you with, it’s been a while since my last post. However, the time feels right, as I’ve very recently passed the anniversary of our move to the Outer Hebrides.
Of course, it’s been quite a year for every one of us for various combinations of the medical, political, cultural and ethereal peaks and troughs that have come our way. I just wanted to take a few minutes to reflect on some personal milestones along the way.
I’ve taken the liberty of including a few of my earlier photos among the new ones and I’ve added occasional links to previous posts that expand further on the references I make.
I remember commenting on how many rainbows we see, and that has been the pattern for the year as the weather has never really settled to any one thing, with a bit of everything but no prolonged periods of some or the others. Rain and sun equals rainbows; West Side and weather begin with ‘W’, as does wind, and that about sums it all up. The local weather website keeps us entertained with its often hilarious and occasionally alarming headlines.
If the weather displays the more dramatic side of nature then the immediacy of the flora and fauna provide the beauty. The bird life has become a passion for us with golden and white-tailed eagles frequently around, the legions of redwings on their way through on their Icelandic pilgrimages, the corncrake in the garden moment and the multitudes of sea birds from spear-fishing gannets and cormorants to the waders and divers along the shore, the clowning oystercatchers a particular favourite of mine. And garden birds in their dozens welcome the bulging feeders that Redhead faithfully refills come rain or shine.
The Spring lambing was a treat with so many around the neighbourhood; there was something of a cuteness overload if I’m honest. And a touch of the exotic was added with the birth of the baby alpacas (crias) along at Callanish.
The croft they live on is shared with over a hundred other creatures, including Topaz, perhaps the most photogenic of them all.
We’ve watched the landscape turn from autumn golds and browns when we arrived through spring hope and onto summer profusion, the acres of machair and explosion of colour exceeding all expectation. And now as I write we watch the autumn reclaim the land, casting an umber and ochre blanket across it once again.
Nature is readily available from the moment I step out of the door here but formal culture has been in more limited supply for reasons we all know about.
However, the Pianocean concert was an unforgettable highlight. The project is led by Marieke Huysmans-Berthou who, along with her family, sails from place to place and plays concerts in the ports she visits.
In this case it was Stornoway harbour and the music and song is presented right there at the harbour, the piano being mounted on the rear deck of their yacht and the audience gathering around the harbour railings or congregating on their small boats and paddle boards. A unique experience and all the more delightful for that.
Recently the more traditional venues have been opening again and the postponed Dark Skies Festival finally got started, the first live event being a performance by Kathryn Jospeh, whose emotive songs were accompanied by Lumen’s excellent astronomy based visuals projected on the giant screen behind her at An Lanntair arts centre in Stornoway. A thoroughly enjoyable evening and it was good to be back in an auditorium once again.
It’s also been a year of learning and expanding existing knowledge for me.
These islands carry the burden of some harsh history, notably the lives behind the names commemorated on the Stornoway war memorial and the tragedy of HMY Iolaire, or the mystery of the lost lighthouse keepers on the Flannan Isles and the helplessness of the Cunndal drownings, amongst others. I’ve explored these and others through local exhibitions and research.
To learn so much more about these events has been a fascinating and humbling experience.
The island also abounds with ancient history, from the enigmatic Callanish standing stones to the Norse mill and kiln and the blackhouses. On Great Bernera in the 1990’s the remains of an iron Age village were revealed at Bosta beach after a bad storm and an Iron Age house has been reconstructed there to show what life would have been like.
Some learning has been of a more curious nature. The Bridge to Nowhere at Ghearadha gives us a permanent memento of a fleeting plan to harness opportunity by Lord Leverhulme around 1920, scuppered by a cultural disconnect.
The Time and Tide Bell at Bosta is a much more recent curiosity, at first glance frivolous but with its own increasingly important message ringing out the alarm.
And, of course, I’m now fully up to date with the yellow, blue and red bottoms of the local sheep. The tupping season is with us once again.
In February my brother, Alastair, passed away suddenly and I stumbled from the tightrope of my own year of significant life change as I hit the pause button to take all that in.
In September, his wife, Jo, and their two grown sons, came to visit the islands. Alastair and Jo loved their one and only visit here and always intended to return. His family’s visit on his behalf, at the time of his birthday, was both poignant and to be celebrated and it was a pleasure to be able to share our new island home with them.
His passing feels as though it’s the fulcrum around which this year of change has pivoted for me.
There is only one photo I can revisit for this particular story of course, and that is the splendid mural on my brother’s kitchen wall of the beaches at Seilebost and Luskentyre, created by technical magic from a photo taken by myself.
I wonder how many, if any, other bloggers might give a photograph of their brother’s kitchen wall such prominence in their reportage?
I am not a religious man, but I do consider myself a spiritual one. If I’m honest I have always struggled to articulate what I mean by that and I’m not looking to spark a debate. But, put simply, I am spiritual about place, about nature and about my sense of searching for who and what I am.
If I can now state that with greater clarity it is perhaps, in part, because of an excellent series on BBC Scotland that I’ve recently been enthralled with – Scotland’s Sacred Islands with Ben Fogle. I cannot recommend it highly enough and its exploration of how these places can bring together all those of every faith and none and find a commonality of spirituality away from the hullabaloo of life elsewhere certainly resonates with me. I recommend it to you.
Anyway, the nights are drawing in, the shadows growing longer and I return to the starting point of my Hebridean adventure, one year under my belt and who knows what adventure in the years to come.
Roghadal or bust? I’ve only just started.
Roghadal or bust 
This is superb Graeme. You’re in a great place. Have you seen the Northern Lights yet? Your photography is excellent, great and interesting composition. Thanks for posting, greetings from London!
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Thanks, Janet. Frustratingly I’ve not seen the Northern Lights yet although I know they have been visible elsewhere on the island. I shall persevere – only a matter of time! Thanks for your comments, as always.
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