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A FAINT mist hung over the
sea, and the road from Broadford Bay was steel-grey in a grey morning. The
islands seemed distant and unreal, save for a trembling ray of sunlight
brought them to warm life, and lit silver fires on the calm face of the
water. From the dust of the city we had, indeed, come to a new world-a
world wherein we could take hold of life at its roots again, and be at
peace.
We cycled swiftly along the shore road, past the white crofts, the
solemn-faced children, the shaggy cross-bred cattle, the dark tangle of
nets hung out to dry. Faint threads of' cloud lingered over Raasay, and
even the nearer island of Scalpay was quiet and sad, devoid of all but
sombre colour.
Yet-we had come to Skye with a song in our hearts, and the song persisted.
The dogs chased us, the people stared gravely out of the little houses,
the long-horned sheep bleated protestingly as they lumbered into the ditch
at our passing; but the road flashed ever faster under our wheels-and it
was a grand day!
Presently, the sun took courage a little. At once, all the surrounding
landscape glowed with warmth and colour. The blue shadows faded from the
grass; the earth became a deep, friendly brown -- even the sad peat
absorbed and gave back a little of the glorious golden light. Ahead of us,
the road was a white garland around the brow of a little green hill; and,
beyond and to our right, the islands took on a strange and dream-like
beauty.
But there was no time, now, to stop and admire the wonderful expanse of
the sunlit sea, with its ever-changing lights and colours, its shades of
turquoise and aquamarine, its sparkling shallows and dark depths streaked
with green and purple. The road before us was long; and we had to make our
choice and act accordingly. So, with a memory of colour and distance to
console us, we turned our faces resolutely away from the enchanted isles,
and followed the road over the curve of the hill.
We reached the head of Loch Ainort in good time, and "parked" our cycles
under the first grey-stone bridge. To our left, on the path we would take,
a waterfall leapt down the brown hillside, and sea-birds flashed in swift
arcs of light through the soft Spring air. Heron and red-shank, cormorant
and grey gull, courted, fished and dipped among the dark weed upon the
shore. It was a fascinating scene -- but, like them, we had our own
business to follow. We lost no time, therefore, in getting on to the
hills.
At the first few steps across the dead heather, our feet sank deep into
black mud, and we laughed with a queer sense of relief That was over. We
were wet. Now we could walk!
Up the long stretch of Coire nam Bruadaran, and over the rise at the end,
our boots. So fast, so hopeful was our pace at first that we were very
soon exhaustedand that with the topmost ridge of the hill hardly in sight!
At last, by common consent, we flung ourselves down in the wet grass, and
drank deeply from a little bubbling burn, the source of the waterfall we
had admired from below. The water was pure gold, icy and clear as crystal,
with the unmistakeable flavour of peat. We bathed our hot faces in it
(unwise, no doubt, but none the less delightful!), and lay for a long
moment on the cool grass, consciously drawing new life from the earth.
Then up and on again, with fresh vigour in our stride and fresh heart for
the tramp we had planned for so long.
The hill rose more sharply now; the grass was smooth and slippery under
our feet. Soon we were breathing fast again -- perspiring as freely as
before. Then, when we were beginning to wonder if we were growing old, the
climb came to a sudden end, and we had our reward.
We were on a gently-sloping plateau scattered about with smooth grey
boulders, marked with the lonely tracks of rabbit and deer. To our right,
the proud head of Marsco leaned against a tranquil sky. On our left, the
black knife-edge of Blaven rose into clear air from a bed of woolly cloud.
But this was only a foretaste of what was to come. A few hundred feet
further on, a dizzy slope of grass rushed pell-mell down to a
pebble-filled glen. The rusty heather blew in soft waves of browndown and
down to the white glimmer of tumbled boulders, over which foamed and
tinkled a tempestuous burn. The soft, incessant music of it was wafted up
on the cool wind; and, if we listened closely, it seemed to come, not only
from this steep, secret glen, but from everywhere at once, as if the very
air about us were filled with the sound of rushing waters.
We stood on a rise and shouted, and our voices, drowning the song of the
burn, echoed and re-echoed among the hollow hills. Directly ahead, the
great company of the Black Cuillin glowered down at us from their cloudy
throne.
I think we could not have seen them under conditions that better revealed
their breath-taking majesty. Dead black, jagged, seemingly impregnable,
they towered up into the soft grey air, their stark crags streaked with
the last of the winter snows. Pinnacle upon pinnacle, sheer, terrible,
everlasting. The clouds swirled about their breasts, melted around their
feet, a changing, shifting wall of vapour, accentuating the stillness of
the massive peaks above. The heads of them all were clear; but the curtain
of mist that draped their shoulders rolled in great white waves deep into
Glen Sligachan, shutting the hills away in their own dread spheres of
silence.
Once more, we stood spellbound, silent, staggered by a beauty almost
outside our comprehension. And, even while we watched, the scene changed
and changed again, and the hills put on new faces over the old scars. A
ray of sunlight touched the top of Sgurr Alasdair, and he stood proud and
alone, a king among princes. Then the light shifted sideways and
downwards, piercing the blanket of clouds round the knees of the hills --
and there below us lay Glen Sligachan with its moss and boulders, and the
stream running like a thread of silver through its tapestry of shaded
green.
Then we could see no more, for the ray of light shivered and died, and we
were once again alone with the Cuillin.
They offered us no comfort now. They had withdrawn once more into their
own cold world of majesty, and neither knew nor cared that we existed. And
yet it was harder than we had ever dreamed to leave them…
And then, as we still stood there in silence, gazing at those stark and
haunting peaks, now quiet and remote among their clouds, we were suddenly
aware that something had happened to us, and we would never be the same
again. The spell of the Cuillin was upon us. We, too, had become the
willing prisoners of a grandeur defying words -- a soulless, heartbreaking
beauty which should have power to call us back, always, from the ends of
the world…
Mists over the Coullin. Sgurr nan Gillean and
the River Sligachan in flood |
