A Dispatch From Skye

July 31st, 2021

Today was so very green, and then eventually the day ended and the sky turned pink. It was a bright pink. Like fluorescent coral. And while the light lingered, I cast my eyes west. The sun was sinking with quiet beauty. The Atlantic, swallowing her whole, surrounded that pink Hebridean horizon.

In those minutes, I felt my tired legs. Two days of hiking was enough to make me sit on a rock. Darkness began to grow and the candy floss sky subsided. Momentarily, I saw the silhouette of those distant islands and felt filled by serenity. Beneath such magnificence one can only sit and watch. The world was jagged then you see, its Caledonian coastline mystifying and wonderful all at once. Any trace of the day’s mist was gone. I felt quite lovely in my solitude.

With night beginning, to one side of these Hebridean Isles sailed a vessel. It became lit by the many white dots one associates with a passenger ship. So I wondered where it was maybe headed. And then, another more poignant thought:

Where am I headed?

But before I get a chance to answer, the other side of my brain answers for me with another question:

Who the hell knows where they’re headed anyways?

Very true, I’ll write in this journal. But it’s still this thought that generates today’s most important one, for ultimately I am a traveller:

Why would anyone want to leave this little Isle? This Isle of Skye. A land of ancient meadows and rolling hills. A place better suited to fairytales featuring imagined lands and pinkish skies. Or to the hearts and minds of those who seek the wilder places on this fine green Earth. I know now that my heart too, is greener for it.

I ask myself in words now only where I could possibly be off to next. And then I close this entry for now.

What a day. And now I’ll rest my tired eyes.

~ Samuel Hodges, July 2021, the West Highlands of Scotland