Dark mornings and bright lights
Posted: Thursday, 18 December 2008 |
The mornings have, of course, been darker recently. It's a long way now from the light 4am skies of summer. Yet different kinds of light keep revealing themselves every day.
The white-bright moon in the clear night sky has been so strong recently, its light filtering through the window and bathing my landing in an eerie glow in the wee small hours. It casts night-shadows and sharpens the silhouettes of the trees on the hill and the islands in the bay. Walking on the beach after dark I can pick out the shapes of the landscape and the sea so clearly.
On cloudy nights a distant orange glow out beyond Goat Island marks the spot where Glasgow lies. On nights like this, on a deserted road with only the sound of the sea on the shore, it is hard to comprehend the hustle and bustle and life of which we see only the glowing embers.
But we have our own light show. The sunrises have been so beautiful of late. One gorgeous clear morning I left for Islay when the sun was still just a pale light behind the mainland and arrived in Port Ellen as the blue and lilac of the sea and sky merged at some indefinable, distant point. The white water round the skerries mirroring the small puffs of cloud in the morning sky.
Each sunrise offers something different. At the start of this week, gone were the soft pink hues and instead a blazing slash of gold and orange burned across the sky in one sharp slice above the hills of the mainland and Arran. As the sun slowly rose the colour seemed to seep out of the sky and into the hillside, setting the reds and oranges of the dying bracken on fire.
I stood there in this sunrise, amazed at the blaze of colour on the hill. Not only for the spectacle of nature, but also because for that brief moment I was transported back to another sunrise, half a world away. Because standing in that chill Scottish morning the hills of my own wee island blazed the same colour as Uluru at dawn.
The white-bright moon in the clear night sky has been so strong recently, its light filtering through the window and bathing my landing in an eerie glow in the wee small hours. It casts night-shadows and sharpens the silhouettes of the trees on the hill and the islands in the bay. Walking on the beach after dark I can pick out the shapes of the landscape and the sea so clearly.
On cloudy nights a distant orange glow out beyond Goat Island marks the spot where Glasgow lies. On nights like this, on a deserted road with only the sound of the sea on the shore, it is hard to comprehend the hustle and bustle and life of which we see only the glowing embers.
But we have our own light show. The sunrises have been so beautiful of late. One gorgeous clear morning I left for Islay when the sun was still just a pale light behind the mainland and arrived in Port Ellen as the blue and lilac of the sea and sky merged at some indefinable, distant point. The white water round the skerries mirroring the small puffs of cloud in the morning sky.
Each sunrise offers something different. At the start of this week, gone were the soft pink hues and instead a blazing slash of gold and orange burned across the sky in one sharp slice above the hills of the mainland and Arran. As the sun slowly rose the colour seemed to seep out of the sky and into the hillside, setting the reds and oranges of the dying bracken on fire.
I stood there in this sunrise, amazed at the blaze of colour on the hill. Not only for the spectacle of nature, but also because for that brief moment I was transported back to another sunrise, half a world away. Because standing in that chill Scottish morning the hills of my own wee island blazed the same colour as Uluru at dawn.
Posted on Life on Jura at 00:08
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