Winter

As winter drew on I decided that it had to be the most beautiful season of the year. The sun was low in the sky - getting light around 9:00 a.m. and setting around 3:30 (we were on the same latitude as Fairbanks and Novosibursk). The daylight hours were like one long sunrise-sunset with the colors changing from pink and gold to blue and gold and back again, reflecting on the silver sea and the snowy peaks across the loch. Just before Christmas we had a week of snowy weather - and with the sheep dotting the hillsides, the cottages with their smoking chimneys and our red gates at the bottom of the garden, it was like looking out at a beautiful Christmas card.

On one particularly lovely day we took a picnic and went up on the mast hill behind our house. The air was clearer than I'd ever seen it. We could see that the Isles of Lewis and Harris stretched across almost the whole horizon and displayed some spectacular cliff scenery. We saw islands that we didn't recognize at all, and to the south we could see Steor, Quinag and the Cuillins on Skye - unbelievable visability in all directions!

People in the village kept telling us that this was truly unusual winter weather - and if we stayed around long enough we'd find that out. Naive as we were we felt it couldn't possibly be worse than a Minnesota winter with its 30 below temps and piles of snow to shovel. Ha!