National Blog Posting Month 2022 - #16

I sometimes look back to the year I arrived in Lewis. On this day in 2004, my wanderings took me to Cearsiadar, a hamlet on the shores of Loch Erisort, 12 miles south of Stornoway. I came to stay in the Ravenspoint Centre, which provided accommodation. As the days shortened, the weather grew colder and stormier. It culminated in a violent storm, some two months later, which claimed five lives in Uist. I left Cearsiadar in February 2005, under circumstances that are known locally. It was the day I went to stay with a person who became a close friend, companion and confidant. I actually never left. She would sometimes say, with a haunted look on her face, that everybody always left her. She ended up leaving me, but that was nature's way, it had to be. 

I sometimes think of my weeks in Cearsiadar, the nights that the walls shook with winter gales. The nights that a flock of sheep ambled by Ravenspoint in the snow. My wanderings along the roads and moors of South Lochs, which enveloped me with a degree of warmth, comfort and familiarity that was not reflected in the actual temperature. I probably needed that at the time. But those were lonely weeks. When I go back there now, I have a completely different perspective.