Long Day's Journey...

Our thoughts are very much with my father right now as he faces the grip of illness; but for now, I would prefer to remember him striding along that beach on the Isle of Harris in 2002, when Judy and I escorted our parents around the Highlands and Islands.

Soon after I took this photograph, he stripped off his shirt and continued along, unperturbed by a flock of Petrels that bombarded him as he walked.
He loved that trip and had always wanted to visit the Hebrides and so we were delighted to be part of his journey there.
Nicholas


On this same trip we visited not only Harris, but Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. 
Lewis, home to Callanish, the great circle of standing stones, which have been battered by such harsh winds and weather that the even the granite has yielded to the ravages of time and nature.


And yet, even still, an unsurpassed beauty silently bears witness to the life of the standing stones...

You have traveled too fast over false ground;

Now your soul has come to take you back.

Take refuge in your senses, open up

To all the small miracles you rushed through.

Become inclined to watch the way of rain

When it falls slow and free.

Imitate the habit of twilight,

Taking time to open the well of color

That fostered the brightness of day.

Draw alongside the silence of stone

Until its calmness can claim you.

John O'Donohue

Judy