Seasons on Harris Read Free Page A

future, Harris still possesses a deep spirit of fortitude and fun that is enticing, moving, and zanily entertaining.
    Let me share with you some of those earlier images and experiences. Much has changed of course, and is still changing, since that time and the future of the once great hand-woven Harris Tweed cottage industry is but one crisis being faced today by the islanders—the hardy Gaelic-speaking Hearaich. But not all is yet lost. In fact there is a resolute spirit here still determined to hold on to the mutual values and shared lifeways that have made the island and the islanders so unique. And, as we shall see, even the tweed itself, and the social fabric woven through so many island traditions, may well yet experience a vital revival. A fine and stirring story may still emerge here—one of those human, uplifting, rags-to-riches, determination-will-out, transformational miracles.
    But all this will come much later in our tales, these woven threads of plight and possibility revealed in the spirit of the islanders and their stories and lives. For the moment let’s visit the Harris Anne and I first discovered together many years ago. The Harris I wrote about then that has lured us back once again.
    There’s a Hebridean Gaelic saying: “When God made time, he made plenty of it,” and here, on the desolate summit of Clisham, at 2,620 feet the highest point on Harris, you sense the infinitely slow passage of time. This is a fine place to know the insignificance of man and wonder if this is how the Earth may have looked at the very beginning.
    The Gaelic name for this island is Na Hearadh—a derivation of the Norse words for “high land” bestowed upon this place by eighth-century Viking invaders. And it is a primeval scene here—no signs of habitation anywhere, no welcoming curls of smoke, no walls, no trees, no dainty patches of moorland flora here among the eroded stumps of archaean gneiss, breaking through the peat like old bones on an almost fleshless torso. On the wild moors of the Outer Hebrides island of Harris, I sheltered in a hollow from a sudden storm where, as they say here, “the raincomes down horizontally” with “drops as big as bull’s balls.” I was crouched among the glowering bulk of the Earth’s oldest mountains, formed more than 3 billion years ago, gouged and rounded in numerous ice ages, and sturdy enough to withstand many more.
    And then—an abrupt soft-focus, almost sensual transformation. The storm passes on, trailing its tentacles of gray cloud like a blown tornado, whirling out over the Sound of Shiant, heading for the dagger-tipped peaks of the black Cuillins on the Isle of Skye, etched across the eastern horizon. The mist and cloud, thick and clammy as hand-knitted Scottish socks, lifts; the air is suddenly sparkling, the sun warm, and far below is a scene that would seduce the most ardent admirer of tropical isles: great arcs of creamy shell-sand beaches, fringed by high dunes, and a turquoise-green ocean gently deepening to dark blue, lazily lapping on a shoreline unmarked by footprints for mile after mile on the great empty beaches of Luskentyre, Seilibost, and Scarista.
    â€œAye—Harris—it’s a magic place you’re going to,” said Hector Macleod at the Ceilidh Place pub in Ullapool, a bustling port town of tiny whitewashed cottages overlooking Loch Broom on Scotland’s west coast. Hector was the elderly barman here, an enthusiastic and knowledgeable informant. “Less than three thousand people livin’ on an island but some of the kindest you’ll ever meet—not pushy mind…” He paused and then winked. “Well—they’ve a bit of the magic too. They’re Gaelic and Celtic—so what can y’expect—they’ve all got the touch of magic in ’em!”
    For years I’ve been promising myself a journey to these mysterious islands where the