Gneiss is a word that doesn’t come up very often. It’s the name given to a metamorphic rock formation – one of the oldest in the world. Here at Scourie, on Scotland’s rugged west coast, surrounded by classic outcrops of the three-billion-year-old stuff, I’m beginning to feel that its qualities exceed a purely technical, geological identity. The landscape it creates is spectacular – menacing in rough weather, majestic in colour-enhancing sunlight – but the living it provides is far from bountiful and, to a city dweller like me, whose interface with nature is less raw, it is the rocks, not the small settlements huddled below them, that comprise the spirit of this place.
The sparse human
population hereabouts seems to be adapted to the habitat and even to relish
being far from the towns and cities. I imagine these folk feel little affinity
with the big bad world of geopolitics, seemingly so irrelevant to their daily
grind of making a living out of grazing sheep, catching lobsters and servicing
tourists. Theirs is a different way of life from the always-on complexity and
intensity of life in teeming cities. What difference would it make to them if,
say, the USA invaded Canada? At times, momentarily overawed by the ancient
bedrock, I feel my own mind disengaging from its habitual agonising over the
machinations of power-hungry tyrants and nations striving against each other.
Could this become a permanent state of mind if I were to live in a place such
as this?
Well, only
by determined choice. Even in remote places, connection to the internet is
possible and the foghorn of Trump’s posturing breaks through the ether as soon
as a signal is established. Fortunately, the signal can also bring good news,
as happened a few days ago. We were approaching the port of Ullapool, where we
were due to stay the night, when I picked up an Instagram post from of a couple
of old friends. They were happily hiking around Ullapool and staying over while
they waited for the ferry to take them to that legendary hunk of gneiss, the
Isle of Lewis. Thus, the combination of serendipity and internet enabled a
joyful catchup in a pub, which we couldn’t have arranged better if we’d tried.
Ullapool
itself is an apparently gentrifying town. Being a port and ferry terminal, its
purpose in life is well established and there is money passing through. I
noticed there is a library and a theatre – neither of which we had time to
visit – as well as a street that contains a deli, an on-trend coffee bar and
re-fuel and re-use shop (the latter being of most interest to me, as it was the
welcome source of a rare commodity – loose-leaf Assam tea), all of which we did
visit. Another place we stopped at, en passant, was Gairloch, where
there is evidence of colonisation by alternative lifestyle people circa 1975.
It takes the form of a café-cum-bookshop called (?), which we discovered on a
previous trip around ten years ago. We called in to check that it still retained
its hippyish charm and, sure enough, it does. Nothing has changed – not even
the stoner soundtrack.
Back on the
road, we take pleasure in small things: the little stands outside crofts offering
garden produce, eggs and chutneys in exchange for cash deposited in honesty boxes;
the temporary neighbourliness on campsites, where courteous consideration is
the norm and conversation rarely has the time to develop beyond small talk; the
wet, windy days devoted to reading, interspersed with the bright ones, ideal
for invigorating walks; and the travelling fishmonger who dispensed seafood
with a good deal of jollity and wit, and whose French accent was apparent
despite his insistence on being from Aberdeen.
Then there’s
the background to the whole show, the time-defying gneiss that offers an
insight into how and why it all works the way it does.
