One of the things about this part of the Hebrides is that the weather can change, dramatically, within the space of five minutes. This weekend there was a storm. The sea was white and spitting foam, the wind was being ferocious. The rain would come horizontally in sheets and sting your face. Just at the point where you decide to give up on your walk and turn back, the sun would break out and laugh at all your wet weather gear. The upside of this is that rainbows would appear. Sometimes part of a rainbow, sometimes a complete and dramatic arch, sometimes fragments of a double rainbow. The ends would disappear into the mist, but once or twice you would see them hit the water in the Sound of Iona.
Coming out of the abbey late the other evening, my breath was taken away by the beauty of a moon and cloud-scape. The moon was full, and there was an amber tinge to its corona, catching the edges of the surrounding clouds. The moonlight spread across the Sound, which was rippled, giving a flatness to the colour. Every shade of grey and silver were visible in a way I had never seen before.
Another evening, I had come out of the west door to a sky so clear the Milky Way looked like it had just been smeared across the night by someone with a huge duster.
The birdlife is on the move. Most of the swallows have left for Africa now, but one family have nested in a chapel where the door is left open most of the time. They sit quietly until a parent flies in, when they all squawk competitively for their food. Sometimes they sit on a beam under the cloister roof and practice flying, hopping along from one beam to the next, and then missing out a few at a time. They have a particularly interesting cry, like a radio tuning in, but in a nice way.
It is quite a leap to get from beam hopping to flying to Africa. Like the rainbows, one of those every day miracles we are in danger of taking for granted.
Coming out of the abbey late the other evening, my breath was taken away by the beauty of a moon and cloud-scape. The moon was full, and there was an amber tinge to its corona, catching the edges of the surrounding clouds. The moonlight spread across the Sound, which was rippled, giving a flatness to the colour. Every shade of grey and silver were visible in a way I had never seen before.
The birdlife is on the move. Most of the swallows have left for Africa now, but one family have nested in a chapel where the door is left open most of the time. They sit quietly until a parent flies in, when they all squawk competitively for their food. Sometimes they sit on a beam under the cloister roof and practice flying, hopping along from one beam to the next, and then missing out a few at a time. They have a particularly interesting cry, like a radio tuning in, but in a nice way.
It is quite a leap to get from beam hopping to flying to Africa. Like the rainbows, one of those every day miracles we are in danger of taking for granted.
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