By February 5th I was started to feel I knew my way around, knew how things would work, and that I was comfortable with things. I had been here nearly a month, and it was starting to all feel pleasantly familiar. I got up as usual that Saturday and headed over to visit my landlady for our Saturday morning "coffee," where I have tea and we chat. She always wants to know what I'm up to. Ali was over as well, so we had a nice chat.
Not long after I returned, I was surprised by a knock on the door, and in walk my good friends Laura and Justin! They were finally back from their four-month bicycle tour of Australia. They whisked me away to have lunch at their place, after a quick walk around to see Loch Roag and their Black House. I ended up spending most of the afternoon there, hanging out and talking and walking the croft with Laura. She pulled out her harp to get started playing again after four months, and I had a go on it. I was surprised at how difficult I found it to play -- it has rather wide string spacing, and after working for a month with my narrow spacing, I found it quite an adjustment. I played them a few tunes, though, which they seemed to appreciate.
From this point on, my weeks seemed to fall into a pretty basic but unscheduled collection of teaching, playing harp, weaving, and lots of walking. I walked the back cliffs of Carloway, around the Butt of Lewis at high tide and dawn, around the village, to the village cemetery and along its coastline, up the hill behind my house a few more times, around the Arnol coastal area, and more. The walks have been increasing, having started by occurring once or twice a week, and now happening almost every day. I'm finding them very theraputic.
| Easy Walk around Carloway | Butt of Lewis at high tide | Andrea's Visit | Cemetery Walk | Arnol Area |
You can read about these separately by clicking the links if interested.
Other highlights of my days have included getting to see the Northern Lights on February 7th. This was one of my major hopes for this trip, and it actually happened! It started out as something pretty basic - just a light wash of colour behind the clouds. Then it started moving all over the place, and as it moved, it flexed its muscles, sticking out rays of colour, and then having the colours shift and change more rapidly than you could take it in. Totally incredible. At times it was almost like someone was taking their fingers and applying pressure to a "mood" surface, and changing the colours and shapes by this pressure. I can't describe it to begin to explain what it was like, but it was totally awesome. I wrote a tune about it first thing the next morning.
I also met friends of Andrea's, named Sascha and Angeles, who are wonderful and friendly people, and made me feel like part of the family right away. This was great, because Andrea came out to celebrate Angeles' birthday with her on the weekend, and I got to join them for the birthday dinner celebration. Andrea came out and stayed with me in Tolstachaolais on Saturday night. We had a really nice time chatting and playing harps (Laura had lent us her harp so we'd have two.) It was a very nice visit.
