Fifteen years ago

On November 10th, 2004, I arrived in the Western Isles of Scotland. The afternoon ferry from Uig, Skye, pulled into Lochmaddy, North Uist, at dusk. After a couple of days in Uist, I journeyed north and found myself in Stornoway, for one night. From November 16th until February 9th, 2005, I stayed in the Ravenspoint Hostel at Kershader, 22 miles south of Stornoway (as the bus goes), 9 miles as the crow flies. It was a singular place. I was there on my own for most nights, although I did have company once or twice. There were more sheep than people in Kershader. For two nights, a howling hurricane put the power off. During those three months in South Lochs, I wandered the moors of the district. It was winter, when darkness comes early here in Lewis. I remember Loch nan Eilean, the big glen between Loch Odhairn at Gravir and Loch Seaforth at Arivruaich. Loch Sgiobacleit and the floes of ice, moving on the surface of Loch Totaichean Amhlaidh. I'm strangely melancholic at the memory of that time; not yearning back to it - because that's a phase in my life long gone, and I cannot go back there. I don't want to. But the hills, the moors and the lochs were soothing for me at that time.

A parallel with later events exists regarding my departure from Uist in 2004. I stayed in Lochmaddy, and it was in Lochmaddy that I met Sophia for the last time, some 8½ years later. On a cold morning in November 2004, I found myself walking the machair in Berneray, before deciding to head for Stornoway. It was the machair in Berneray that proved soothing for Sophia, during the last four years of her life, when she lived there. It was the machair in Berneray where some of her ashes were scattered in December last year.