In 2014 I escaped to Scotland again — another seven-hundred-mile drive in my old van, heading north for a week off work. I’d been doing an almost four-hour daily commute into London, and all I wanted was the opposite of that life: solitude, quiet, and the familiar comfort of Harris.
I drove until I reached Glen Etive and stopped for the night, exhausted. A deep sleep, then back on the road at first light. Five more hours through the Highlands, across Skye, and on to the ferry at Uig. The crossing was calm. I ate haddock and chips, drank coffee on deck, and watched as the ferry slid into Tarbert. It was late afternoon but still light enough to feel like the day had something left to offer.
I stopped to see a friend in the village, caught up on local news, and gratefully accepted still-warm cakes she’d made that afternoon. She invited me to breakfast the next morning, and then I slipped away into the Harris night to find somewhere to sleep.
I parked on an exposed rise between two bays, looking across the water to the dark outline of Taransay. I remember putting on Dark Side of the Moon, which for me always fits a Hebridean night — especially with an Aberlour or two. The island was silent except for the wind and the occasional sigh of the tide.
At the time I’d been getting more into night photography, capturing star-filled skies on clear evenings. So I set up the tripod and tried to compose something in what little light there was; it was a moonless night, so shapes and horizons were barely there.
While I was working, I noticed a faint pulsing in the western sky — something flashing or breathing. My first thought, embarrassingly, was that it might be a distant car with its hazard lights on. Harris does that to you: simplicity becomes plausible.
I took a photograph anyway — a twenty-second exposure — and checked the screen.
There it was.
Aurora borealis.
Right there on Harris.
My camera had seen far more than my eyes could. To me the sky had looked almost empty, a quiet darkness with a vague shimmer. But the photograph revealed greens and subtle shapes rolling above Taransay, something living and moving that I hadn’t recognised at all in real time.
It was the first time I’d ever seen the Northern Lights.
Even now, I can remember the stillness of that moment, standing there alone on a rise between two empty bays, listening to Pink Floyd and staring at a sky I thought I understood.
I slept well that night.