Of all the places I visited in Scotland, the Outer Hebridean islands of Harris and Lewis may have been my favorite. Adrift in the North Atlantic, these two isles are wild and remote like nothing you’ve experienced. Mountains and boulders with barely a skim of peat and heather clinging in defiance of the fierce winds, burns and rivers leaping down boulder-strewn moors, and a sky so blue you experience its color as a bolt of energy through your eyeballs and straight to your heart: this is Harris and Lewis.
There is a habit among residents of letting an old stone croft house several centuries old just crumble while the new one is built alongside it. The explorer can be rewarded by finding an old stone croft and pen, inhabited only by grass and sheep.
There are ruins that are of the ground, rocky and moss-covered and still standing hundreds or even thousands of years after the inhabitants have died or fled. Below is Carloway Broch, a round stone tower that looked like a hell of a way to live, but at least it was out of the elements.
Then you have the Callanish Stones, slabs thrust in the ground by hardy folk thousands of years ago. For over a thousand years it was used as a religious ground, then was forgotten, then some farmers kept sheep there, and now people stand among the stones and wonder what they’ve done with their lives to deserve being in a magical place like this.
You may know the name Harris because of a famous cloth, Harris Tweed. The real thing is only allowed to be made by people in their homes by hand (or foot) powered looms. We met a weaver in his house by following a tiny road out past the edge of nowhere. He led us in and spoke with an oddly Scandanavian-inflected Scottish accent, perhaps a Hebridean remnant of early Viking settlers. His fabric was marvelous, each run of over 100 meters tied off by hand with almost 700 knots. Feel Harris tweed and you are running your hands over craft and history.
Harris and Lewis aren’t without their oddball characters. Maybe it’s the remoteness or the wind or the ruthless Atlantic waves pounding the rock. This woman looks a bit shocked to be wearing a hat.
Here’s a gentleman who is quite pleased with his Harris Tweed jacket and tie but doesn’t realize his Bea Arthur hairdo got a bit mussed.
Finally there are the beaches, swathes of sugary white sand rimmed by turquoise waters in the most unlikely northern climate. And unlike Southern California, you’ll have the entire place to yourself.
There are places in the world that get in my blood, places once seen to which I have to return again with an unslakable thirst. The Rocky mountains, the Western desert of the Sahara, and now, the Hebrides. I’ll be taking my family back here again so they can understand what it is to be adrift in the Atlantic on a rocky island with the sea breeze in your lungs. Thank you, Harris and Lewis.
Writer, architect, father, husband.