Chasing the storm at Ardvreck Castle

Sometimes in Scotland, you have to run to catch the sky. Even in the summer the clouds can sweep up over the horizon and cover the landscape in minutes. For photographers, every shift can be a missed opportunity.

Oh the agony, waiting for the clutch of visitors to move away from the castle so I could get a clear shot with the bulging clouds behind it. The road that now winds behind old Calda house, a roofless ruin of what had once been a 14-room manor, looks sturdy and reassuring as the wind picks up and the darkness soars over the surface of Loch Assynt. Without the road, the possibility of escape would seem to evaporate.
There is time yet to get to the other side, to catch the violence and the beauty of the storm’s black veil, and the rainbow that grows from two mounds of green on either side of the castle. The single stony spike seems to point accusingly at the belly of the rainbow, like a warning not to trust something simply because it looks inviting.

You see, James Graham, the 1st Marqess of Montrose, knocked on the door of this castle on 25 April, 1650. Charles I was already dead, but James had continued the fight for the royalist cause and had lost his most recent battle. Her husband away, Christine Macleod, wife of Neil Macleod of Assynt, opened the doors of Ardvreck Castle to the desperate James.

I wonder if she smiled as she led him to the dungeon. I wonder what she told him to make him think he was going somewhere safe. And I wonder what went through his mind the moment he realized he had been tricked. She locked him in there and sent for troops, who flung him off to Edinburgh. Less than a month later, he was executed.

Transfixed by the sight of the rainbow against the storm, I stay until the drops begin to pelt me and the wind pushes into my ears like fork tongs trying to scramble my brains. I thrust my camera back into my bag and run for the car, so grateful for the road that will see us away to safety.

A road for motorcyclists

Driving in the northwest of Scotland toward Ullapool, we descended into this valley. I could only think of my friends who ride motorcycles, and how they would love this.

Solstice spaces: Achnahaird Beach

This could start as one of Ruth’s odes to turquoise, the way the sun churns up liquid jewels from the dark northern waters. Because this is summer, the time when our latitude becomes an uncoiled spring. For now the days are so long, there is room to hang up all the pieces of our lives, to let our memories breathe and gather the sweetness that seems to come from spaces between the air. We long for it the same way our mothers would haul down the sheets from the line and press the clean cotton into their smiling faces, recalling their own maternal ghosts.

We know these are the things that we will pull in close to us when the winter comes. And it will come. But when it does we will be holding a vast collection of molecules, the rapid-fire procession of all our days, stretched out through the summer of our youth.

Balnakeil: Death of a Highwayman

There should be a word for a saga which time has faded into myth and obscurity. It has taken more than 400 years, but the details of the life of Donald McMurdo (aka Domhnull MacMhurchaidh) seem to be all but washed away. Even the spelling of his name - which my Scotland guidebook lists as “MacMurchow,” - seems to be in some dispute.

What remain of the specifics of his life twist meekly in the wind beneath his title of “highwayman and contract killer.” Contract killer seems straight forward enough, but “highwayman” comes storming through the mind in a veil of mist and legend.

In this case the “highways” are narrow roads located in the north of Scotland in what is now the district of Sutherland, a world of deadly moorland, strong winds and wild seas. Claw your way back through the years to the 1600s and you’re looking at a soggy horse track through an endless vista of bog and peat.

McMurdo is said to have killed 18 people, often tossing them down the “blow hole” at Smoo Cave near Durness. I imagine a dramatic swoop of a black cape as he hurls his screaming victims over the edge before mounting his dark horse and riding off with his spoils.

McMurdo is buried in the churchyard at Balnakeil, his grave indicated on the south wall by a skull and crossbones. The elements are slowly wearing away the ruins of the 17th century church, and as many times as we circled we could not find the promised marker.

According to my research, we should have turned left into the little nook below. There we would have found his tomb and read "Donald Makmurchou here lies low/ Was ill to his friend, and worse to to his foe/ True to his master in prosperity and woe. DMMC 1623"

It is said that the clergy of the church had not wanted to bury such an evil man in sacred ground.

A compromise was reached, spurred on by payment (one source says it was his employer who paid, another says McMurdo himself prearranged his burial in the churchyard to guard against those who would desecrate his grave).

McMurdo’s grave was positioned “half in and half out” of the ground, protecting him within the church walls but leaving his eternal soul partially exposed, like a shiny thing for the eye of the Almighty.

During our wanderings we found some graves whose moss-covered skulls drew our attention far more than the desire for historical accuracy. For us, these rubbed-out and sinking monuments spoke more convincingly of a long-ago story of darkness, thievery, death and a timeless descent into spiritual rot.

Long before Balnakeil church, the first place of worship is thought to have been built some 1200 years ago (in Gaelic Balnakeil means “bay of the church”). The spot is also the final resting place of Gaelic poet Rob Dunn.

The church still looks out over to Balnakeil Bay, which leads to Faraid Head. It was there that an emigrant ship sank in 1849, killing all on board. Their bodies are housed in an unmarked mass grave, their combined bulk creating a small raised area in the south corner of the churchyard.
The whole scene is overlooked by the worn and stoic Balnakeil House. Built in 1744, it resembles a home from an atmospheric thriller, in which a harmless holiday to the seaside turns into something ghastly, as the walls begin to seep with the memories of past evil deeds. But perhaps it is just my imagination…

New lamb waking up, feeding

These were also taken in Polin, but you can see lambs all over Scotland in the spring. It is one of my favourite sights, these gleaming white bundles of white wool against the green hillsides. As they grow they become strong and muscular, jumping off small hills, chasing and head-butting each other.

But while they are very young they never leave their mothers' sides, following them through the fields, crying and running to catch up if they stray more than a few feet away. This baby is obviously very new - you can see the umbilical cord still attached, and the blood staining the mother's legs.

Storm brewing at Polin Beach

On the way to Kinlochbervie, it is easy to pass by this tiny village, but somehow we decided to take the turn, park the car and walk through the farmer's field down to this small arch of white sand and black rocks.

If only you could see the wind, cold and wild and creating a bouncy updraft for the seagulls that soar above the cliffs, where white-washed cottages stand braced against the weather. The wind was so strong it almost erased the smell of the sea. We stood alone above the sand and watched the storm approach, a dark bulge gathering up the horizon.