Picture This: Portree in Repose

The Isle of Skye has been a shade, the invisible slip of a beauty disappearing at the end of a dark hallway. The thundering Cuillins and ripsaw Quirang erased by a null, gray sky. My vision has been harshly curtailed – often just hundreds of yards in any direction, like the darkness of some top-down RPG map opening and closing around me. Occasionally the clouds fall apart like unspun wool and reveal something austere and enduring. It’s a gentle reminder to count blessings, to give thanks, to acknowledge.

From our last bed & breakfast’s front yard Portree appears to huddle beneath a roiling mass of aerial monotony. The backs of white-washed houses peek over tall grasses. Their unseen faces are a riot of pastels. The wind and the rain and the gray have scoured my irises of any color and sent me into the lethargy of a sun-starved reptile. I look into the spitting rain and wonder if the sun will deign to appear, to share a little light, to open up the sky over Skye.