Seasons on Harris Read Free

horizon, and down the green sweep of sheep-sprinkled, wildflower-adorned machair meadowlands (a rich mix of blown sand and peaty earth) to the soaring dunes of the Atlantic coast. And then suddenly—in a masterwork of topographical trickery—appear mile after glorious mile of slow-arcing, blond-gold beaches sparkling against a Caribbean turquoise ocean with slappy wavelets easing up talcum-soft sands. Surely the last thing one expects to see in such a surly-burly landscape. And yet, here they lie, arc after golden arc, framed by bosky, grass-sheened dunes stretching southward as I move down closer to the ocean, skimming the wings of herring gulls and golden eagles, seeing my reflection flash and ripple in the slow tides.
    And then comes a long, slow curl above scattered crofting homes and the weedy humps of far older dwellings with skeletal bones of stone walls, three or more feet thick—the bold remnants of island “black houses”—along with Bronze Age burial sites, and solitary standing stones whose origins are as mysterious and mythical as the place itself.
    The broken, boulder-strewn spine of the island emerges again as I curl around its southern shore, but this time even more pugnacious and lunar in its lonely isolation. No more glorious beaches here—just tight rock-bound bays and tiny huddled homes set in clefts and cracks of shattered gneiss.
    At first all is silence. Then comes a sound—a distant clicking, clacking sound that, as I float lower, becomes a patterned clickety-clack, clickety-clack, clickety-clack. And I swoop in a shallow loop to the source ofthe sound—in a small tin lean-to shack at the end of a croft home. And, gently, my feet touch the soft grass by the shack and I stroll slowly to a rain-stained window and peer inside…
    And there at a rust-crusted cast-iron loom sits an elderly man, perched on an angled wooden bench, his feet rhythmically pedaling the old noisy contraption. One hand guides the weaving shuttle across the hundreds of tight warp threads; the other strokes and caresses the finely patterned cloth slowly emerging on the spool, weft by tight weft. The colors of the cloth, woven in an intricate herringbone pattern, are the colors of this wild and enigmatic land—all those bronzes, burnt golds, ochres, olive greens, and deep purples of the peat moors. And I see his hands, rock-rough and thickly veined, gene-linked to generations of crofter-weavers—these weavers of the Clo Mor, the Great Cloth, for which this strange little island is known across the whole world. The tweed—that tough, instantly recognizable tweed of Harris. The “Cloth of Kings” is familiar to us all for its “peat-reek,” its “tickle,” and its enduring character. And the man’s huge hand strokes his cloth with the familiarity of an old friend and his rheumy eyes twinkle and he is proud.
    And I am here now with him, as the sound of the loom ceases. He sighs a long sigh and I watch his hands slowly pulling a worn oilcloth over the unfinished woven tweed, tight on its spool.
    The old man stands, a little unsteadily, reaches out to a small lopsided table near the loom and picks up a local newspaper, with a prominently dramatic headline that reads:
    THE END OF AN ISLAND—IS HARRIS TWEED DOOMED?
    As I said, I have been here before.
    Anne, my wife and best friend for over thirty years, was with me that first time and it was her enthusiasm to return for a far more extended period of residence and exploration that encouraged me to undertake this intriguing odyssey. Which surely must be the fantasy of many of us—to live simply on a remote island among warmhearted people, sampling strange and wonderful foods, and sipping, in this instance, the glorious malt whiskies so beloved by the Highlanders, and the world in general for that matter.
    Despite the island’s long, hard history, its social deprivations, cruel fortunes, and fickle