Category: solas

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Villingardalsfjall

After that moment of pure terror on the mountainside – when I clung to the sliding scree in desperation, the fjord deep and blue below me – I’ve finally reached the summit and sit at its northern precipice, looking down. Fog blows up at me in cold gusts. It’s hardly a surprise: the whole summit has been crawling in cloud since I arrived but, unlike the dull clamminess I’ve come through, this fog is lit from the inside. It seems sourceless, blowing up out of nowhere in swirling puffs and, other than the lumpy rock immediately around me, I can see nothing else. I would have thought I would be disappointed: to have come all this way – by sea, by bus, by painstaking foot and hand – and not be able to see the view from this most northern Faroese peak. Yet I find I am grateful. After that terrifying moment below, to be here now in the presence of this unseen luminance, this blind light…

I become still and let it absorb me. I hear birds cackling, wind in small gusts; I see moss shining quietly when the fog is blown thin for a moment. And it’s such a beautiful fog. It fills my brain, like a dream I can’t wake from – a bright mist, a lucent opacity, a billowing emptiness I don’t ever want to leave.

Villingardalsfjall, Viðoy, Føroyar / Faroe
22nd June 2019

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Ettrick Bay

cold sea, cold sun,
   Arran hidden within a vanishing haze,
      shining sands evaporating invisibly

Ettrick Bay, Bute, Argyll, Scotland
23rd February 2018

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circle

6.30 pm, 66°13’13″N. An Arctic tern wings past the sun, which is high in the west above a row of bunched fluffy grey clouds. A broad platinum path blazes to the horizon beneath it. The east wind is getting colder and the mountains behind it increasingly snow-covered: an unending panorama of tiny pointed peaks, uplifting and continually startling to look at. Ahead loom the Træna islands, steep bumps growing ominously; one island a single jagged fang, almost frightening to look at.

9.35 pm, 66°28’54″N. The wind has picked up to about fifteen knots and we’re flying along at well over six. Up, up we go, over the surface of the rounded world, the minutes of latitude rushing by our hull.

9.45 pm, 66°30’0″N. We’re looking into the Arctic now, past the sharp teeth of Træna, towards distant ranges of snowy peaks, whipped like icing on a Christmas cake. A slight yellow glow warms their north-west-facing hollows as the sun slowly gravitates across the sky; as we ride north to greet it.

10.08 pm, 66°33’02″N. I sit with the handheld GPS and watch the numbers tick upwards.

10.14pm, 66°33’48″N. We have crossed the Arctic Circle! The sun lies behind a bank of grey cloud in the north-west with small scraps of cloud below it outlined in livid gold. A patch of rainbow hangs in front of the mountains to the east, the sharp peaks beyond all softened by the sun’s rosy-tinged touch. Ahead, above the northern horizon, a clear band of sky stretches like a luminous yellow promise. We sail on towards it.

foredeck and mainmast of boat on cold sea with pale yellow light on the far horizon ahead

Norwegian Sea
8th June 2017

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northward

We’re hanging out here with the eiders and oystercatchers, the heron and a few noisy gulls. We’re waiting for our flu to subside, for the winds to shift, for the tide to turn. And when they do, we’ll be gone again, north again, hopefully further north than we’ve ever been before.

The sun’s cool and golden now, settling slowly behind the various western peninsulas of the mainland. Will it be thinner in the north or more substantial? And what will we be? Still light-driven nomads of sorts, I guess. As I suppose we all are, continually moving in time if not geography, forever following the sun.

Ettrick Bay, Bute, Scotland
10th April 2017

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Suileag

The passing sunlight makes a cross on the worn wooden floor of the bothy. Outside the great mount of Suilven heaves around the winds.

Sun. Hill. Shelter.
Observance. Love. Relief.

simple cross shadow on old wooden floor illuminating its worn grain

Suileag bothy, Assynt, Scotland
10th September 2016