Isle of Mull

When the rain whips around the small boat you’re on, the waves rocking it like a toy, and the mountains mock you in their stoic, giant magnificence high above the loch, when the sea is silver in  sunlight but lashed with diamond hail, then Scotland unfolds her velvet and sequinned drapes for you. Out of this elemental fabric’s fold the eagle emerges to stop your breath. Circling below rain-heavy, pewter clouds, golden talons curled to grab fish, focused amber eyes, wing-strokes slow and measured, they have come to claim their price. 

On the outcrops of Scotland, where its coast crumbles into the Atlantic, where the last volcanic rocks sprout from the Hebridean Shelf, little clowns have made their weatherbeaten home. In flocks they rise from the ocean to come to their nests, beautiful and small,  facing gales and gulls magnificently to raise their chicks where the sea crashes onto cliffs after a thousand miles’ journey. As wild as they are exotic, the Treshnishs are magnetic in charm, alive under a concert of seabirds’ squawks. The skies open to drench you to the skin while the sun laughs from behind clouds to spill her warmth over the glens beyond Mull and you are enslaved forever to the area’s wild beauty.