lili-uisge · water lily
An Turas Mòr · Pàirt II
Eilean
a' Cheò
The Isle of Mist. Skye keeps its treasures under cloud, and hands them over one at a time, to those who climb.
tòisich — begin ↓
The Isle of Mist. Skye keeps its treasures under cloud, and hands them over one at a time, to those who climb.
The island day, west to east.
A nod to the first of us
G. W. WilsonFound framed on a castle wall: Aberdeen's pioneering Victorian photographer, who lugged a portable darkroom up these same roads a century and a half before me. Every photographer in Scotland walks in his tripod holes.
The castle gardens, dripping and blooming — subtropical by stubbornness.
lili-uisge · water lily
crocosmia
neòinean · daisy
flùr pincField plate: what the castle pools grow while the gales are elsewhere.
Dùn BheagainSeat of the MacLeods for eight hundred years — the oldest continuously inhabited castle in Scotland, upside-down in its own sea loch.
An caistealBasalt walls, flag flying, gales pending.
Crofting country between the castle and the north — walls that outlive their builders' names.
gàrradh-crìche · march wall
baile-croite · township
an tùr · the towerHow the island lived
An taigh-tughaidhThatch roped and stoned against wind that has opinions. Inside: everything a family and their cattle needed for a winter.
Tools hung where hands left them. The wool dyed with what the moor gave — lichen, heather, bog myrtle.
a' cheàrdach · the smithy
na sàbhan · the saws
snàth · dyed wool
an lampa · the lamp
Flora MacDonald lies here
Fionnghal NicDhòmhnaill · 1722–1790She rowed a fugitive prince 'over the sea to Skye' in 1746, and half the Highlands to a new world after. Dr Johnson supplied the epitaph: a name to be 'mentioned in history, and if courage and fidelity be virtues, mentioned with honour.'
The crosses at Kilmuir grow their own green wool now.
crois chòinnich · mossed cross
clach laighe · recumbent
an cladh · the graveyardClimb into the cloud
The road narrows, the cloud lowers,
and the island starts keeping secrets.
What we could not see from the path, drawn from memory.
An t-slighe suasFalling-rocks sign, one fellow pilgrim, and forty minutes of up.
The mist opens like a curtain —
ten seconds at a time.
Na binneaganThe whole landslip is a cathedral with the roof off.
Wait for it —
Bodach an StòirThe Old Man himself — fifty metres of trap rock left standing when the mountainside slid. He has outlasted every religion that ever named him.
Below the landslip: sitka rows, a glacier's litter, and the lochs stitched silver to the sound.
a' choille · the plantation
clach chòinnich · mossed boulder
na lochan · the lochsThe king's harbour at dusk
Na h-eathraicheanRowing boats on the hill lochs, resting on their reflections.
ÙigeBunting over the road at Uig — somebody's gala day survived the summer.
Am portThe pink, blue and cream row above the harbour — fishermen's houses wearing their Sunday paint on a Wednesday.
Lodge St Kilda's masonic square, poppy wreaths against a wall, and the harbour's real landlords on a chimney pot.
an loidse · the lodge
1912
crùn is cuimhne · wreaths
faoileagan · the gulls
The light goes down over the bay
and takes the whole island with it.
