The Sands of Harris

We had a tall plan for our second and last day in the Hebrides. Mother felt we wasted half the day before, first having trouble getting ourselves out of the house, then spending half the day in town. So the result was trying to fit everything into the second day. We planned to visit the Butt of Lewis (Lewis was the area where we were staying in the Hebrides) and the Blackhouse Village, an ancient village restored and lived in from the 1700’s until 1975. As it turned out, we saw neither.

What we did see was worth what we missed. We decided first to visit Harris. There was little in the way of historical ruins or anything of that sort in Harris. What Harris did hold was a plentiful supply of breathtaking views, views that differ substantially from that of the rest of Scotland. It also was going to require several hours drive for the whole trip.

The drive was hard on my father I suspect, being exclusively more of these two-way one-lane roads with the occasional passing points. As the roads got worse, the views got better. This was not a happy combination for my father, who wanted desperately to look. But these roads had sharp, extremely frequent turns with (unless you’re Superman and can see through cliff faces) 99% of visibility blocked. Do you have any idea how scary that is on a one-lane road with cars going both ways?

The supreme accomplishment of the roads however, the feature that must have made my father, when he first saw it, think the roads were playing a practical joke on him, was this: At certain points along the road, the hilly nature of the road made it so that somehow there were times that we could be only feet from the crest of a hill, even a small hill, and entirely unable to see any part of the road past it. For all we could see, there could have been a steep drop off the cliff, or an extremely steep downhill slope, or just unpaved road. We had absolutely no idea, our imagination was the limit. Try driving over a hill that, even from feet away, could plausibly drop off into sheer cliff (basically half the terrain was sheer cliff). Try rushing that at 30 mph. Now try that periodically for a few hours. I’m glad I didn’t have to drive.

Was Harris worth 5 hours of this? Jessum Crow, if you think not, you clearly haven’t seen Harris. All the emerald hills, azure mountain lakes, and wild rocky peaks overlooking the unfathomably temperamental ocean -- none of that could have prepared me for what I saw in Harris.

Why?

Because what I saw in Harris, I didn’t really think existed outside the Caribbean Islands. Two large cliffs, if you can imagine, parted as we drove along our curvy road, to reveal a vast expanse of perfectly flat, white beaches stretching far and wide, with tides of the bluest of clear waters lapping at their shores under the pleasant sun. I think all our mouths were agape -- we hadn’t expected to find anything like this in Scotland. We parked near the beach and excitedly made our way to its shores.

Keep in mind this is Scotland, quite far north where the water is never warm, but I don’t recall if I even tested the waters before throwing off socks and shoes and marching in. There was a good long way to march before I would need to take off anything more than that; the shallows went out a great distance before becoming even shin-deep (and given the sparkling majesty of the beaches, I think it has been well proven to me that beauty can indeed be only shin-deep).

The water, when I first stepped in it, was surprisingly warm; easily swimming water. As I went out further though, the temperature swiftly and dramatically for the colder. I went perhaps 20 yards out before my feet informed me that moving forward was no longer an acceptable course of action.

Still, once I was back in the significantly warmer shallows, my feet were happy to let me wander the shallows for interesting stones and shells. There was a plethora of interesting things, and this paradises specialty was the most delicate of delicate beautiful shells.

The first I found was a pair of oval shells, perhaps half the size of my little fingernail each, joined at their midsection on one side. The two shells were a brilliant dark but vibrant ember red. Their thickness was definitely not that of a fingernail though, it was far more fragile. I was afraid of breaking the tiny thing simply by holding it. It was amongst the most beautiful shells I have ever found. Then, as I began to look, I realized that this beautiful pair of shells was not a braggable find on this beach -- shells just like them spotted the sands all over. Such shells were so common that I cannot imagine a person needing more than 30 seconds to find one from any spot on the beach. They were everywhere! Later I found the same shell, but a pearl white rather than red. The joining of the pair at the midsection of one side made them immediately comparable to angels wings.

We enjoyed the beach for at least a few hours. When the tide began to come in, there was no question about what was happening, and it was quite dramatic. We could actually see the tide creep inward. We could watch, with no effort, its constant progress. When it happened my mother was more on the ball than I was. We were sitting on the sand, a yard or so from the tide, relaxing when she began gathering her stuff, telling us that the tide would be on us in a moment. The waters were still several feet away from us, so I scoffed at her and continued to relax. I was almost very, very sorry. I just barely got my stuff out of tides way as it surrounded and almost engulfed me.

I quickly moved backward to where mom had already relocated. This new spot, picked to keep us safe from the tide for at least a little while, did not last 5 minutes before it, to, was taken by the water. It was after moving backwards the second time that we realized the tide was moving so fast that we could actually witness its passage, as the waters crept forward at a consistent pace. It was pretty cool.