Seasons on Harris (29 page)

“Yes—Anne and I saw that in the spring. Beautiful. Hundreds of little bouncy balls of fleece. Tails wagging as they suckled greedily. She wanted to write poetry about it all…but took photographs instead!”

“Aye, it's my favorite time.”

“And then?”

“Well—then we have the sales. Some of the lambs, but mainly the older males. And then in June and July we have the first gathering for the fank—marking and shearing. Not much of a market for the wool, though, nowadays. They use mainland wool for the Harris Tweed here. Our Blackface wool is too hard. Used to be popular for carpets and the like—but not so much now. And then in August we have the big lamb sales—we had over six hundred from Harris this year…a pretty good year, despite everything.”

“And then we're back to now.”

“Right. Another gathering at the fank.”

“For which you'd like my help.”

“Aye—that would be very nice indeed.”

“For you…I'm sure.”

Ian gave a great snort. “And for you too! It's an experience not many outsiders enjoy.”

 

U
NFORTUNATELY, THIS OUTSIDER DIDN'T ENJOY
it either.

And it wasn't through reluctance or laziness. It was simply because I was caught unwittingly in a difficult dilemma that can be traced back a couple of months or more when I'd been cajoled by the charming—and always helpful—librarian at our little library into buying a handful of lottery tickets for some school improvement project in Tarbert.

“You've won second prize!” I remember an excited Dondy telling me. “A day of fly fishing with your own personal ghillie on the Amhuinnsuidhe Castle estate! Isn't that fantastic?!”

“Well, I suppose it is,” I said, being rather cool about the whole thing because I'd never done a minute's fly fishing in my life. But also inwardly
delighted because this was the first prize of any significance I'd ever won anywhere.

And then I promptly forgot all about it until early October when Dondy asked me how I'd enjoyed the experience. I goofily admitted that my memory, not being what it once was, had failed me. Again.

“Well—you'd better get moving. Fishing season ends on October fifteenth—in less than a week!”

So I got moving, called the castle, and asked when it might be convenient to come and enjoy my prize. I was informed that, because of a series of important fee-booked events (doubtless attended by the cream of British aristocracy or a bevy of megamillionaires), the coming Friday was the only possible day available. Virtually the last day of the season.

And Friday, of course, was Ian's sheep-gathering day on the high hills of North Harris.

Convincing myself that the gathering might slide over into Saturday—after all, sheep are not known for precise schedule-keeping—I called Ian to explain.

He seemed disappointed but agreed that there might, in fact, be a little final rounding-up to do early Saturday morning.

Thus, I was so to speak, and no pun intended, off the hook and free to go happily hooking other things up among the high lochans of the castle estate.

“So—y'no done s'much in the way o' fishin,' then?” asked ghillie David Brown, a lean, wiry man, possibly in his late forties. He was dressed in traditional ghillie garb of moorland-hued tweed suit, green rubber wading boots, thick woolen pullover, and a perky little deerstalker hat set, with Sherlock Holmes panache, firmly upright on his narrow, weather-etched head. He looked distinctly disappointed.

“Well—I thought I should level with you,” I said, wondering if it would have been better if I'd donated my day of fishing to someone who would have better appreciated the honor of being hosted around this revered estate with his own personal ghillie.

“An' fly fishin'—have y'never tried that either a' suppose?”

“Uh…no. Never.”

“Ah,” said David, looking even more forlorn.

“Well—they say there's always that chance of beginner's luck…”

“Aye, aye, they do say that…indeed they do,” mumbled David, looking extremely unconvinced by such inane platitudes.

“To be honest, the thing that really made me want to have a go when I won the prize was that book by Norman Maclean—y'know the one—
A River Runs Through It
. I've always remembered that wonderful line: ‘The one great thing about fly fishing is that after a while nothing exists of the world but thoughts about fly fishing.' He makes it all sound so meditational and Zenlike.”

David's eyes brightened and a smile appeared. “Aye—so y'know that book, d'ye?”

“Indeed I do—y'remember, he says: ‘In our family there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing.'”

“Right. And then he says: ‘Fishing is a world created apart from all others, and inside are special worlds of their own…'”

“Yes. Great. Well—at least we both enjoy the same book!”

“'S'one of my favorites. I'm a real one for reading. Gi'me a book and a warm fire and I'm set for the night. Y'can forget yer TV and videos and all that stuff. Books a' much better, don't ye think?”

“Absolutely!” I gushed, realizing that all was not yet lost. The day might well turn out to be worthwhile after all, despite my distinctly neophyte status. Certainly in terms of the weather, things already looked promising. After three miserable October days of “mizzle” and murk, the sun had finally broken through that ponderous clutter of gray clouds and I could feel autumnal warmth on my shoulders as the two of us stood together outside the castle looking out across Soay Sound.

Ian Scarr-Hall, the new owner of Amhuinnsuidhe Castle, was now only into his second season of hosting gatherings of avid deer hunters and salmon fishers here, and he had given me a quick tour of his elegant hostelry before my ghillie turned up.

“Madonna almost bought this place, y'know…,” Ian told me, with a sly smile, almost as soon as we met. He was a tall, thin, energetic-looking man, a wealthy owner of a large property management company, and exuding that proud air of someone who, in the riper years of life, was finally living his life's dream. “But she didn't like the fact that the main
road to Hushinish went right past her front door!” (This sixteen-mile cul-de-sac, barely wider than a cart track, is actually little used, except by seclusion seekers enjoying the sublime charms of Hushinish Bay beach and the more hidden sunbathing enclaves overlooking tiny Scarp Island.)

“No chance of a bypass 'specially for her, then?”

Ian gave a hearty guffaw and just pointed at the rocky terrain that rose up immediately behind the castle and continued on, pretty much semivertically, for another mile or so onto the vast open moors of North Harris.

“So—I was lucky,” he continued in his broad, mid-England accent. “It needed quite a bit of restoration so that put off a lot of other potential buyers. But I just had to have the place. I've been coming to Harris for decades—almost since I was a lad. I love the island—everything about it.”

Ian extended his arms in an eloquent theatrical gesture to encompass the sweeping vistas across to Taransay, the elegant arched gateway to the estate, and the soaring mountains behind him. And my favorite feature—the magnificently layered series of waterfalls that tumbled off the moor and cascaded into the small bay and harbor across the far side of the castle's sheep-cropped lawns.

He noticed me focusing on the frothy spate of peat-colored waters. “Oh, boy, yes—that's so beautiful in the summer. Boiling with salmon as they come in by the hundreds from the ocean—thousands of miles they've traveled—all the way back to the stream of their birth. And then they leap—huge, powerful leaps, almost like flying—up and up the ledges of the falls and then way up the stream. It's an incredible sight! I never get tired of watching them.”

I could tell this man was entirely in his element despite the deluge of details he'd had to face during a long and arduous restoration of the castle.

“But it's been worth it, don't y'think?” he asked rhetorically, after our tour of the grand highlights—the elegantly paneled and painting-adorned dining room and lounges, the enormous baronial fireplaces, a beautifully furbished library, and an eclectic selection of a dozen or so luxurious bedrooms.

“Amazing,” I think I said after this glimpse into his hedonistic haven-supreme.

“What's amazing is the range of people who've owned the castle since it was built for the Earl of Dunmore in 1867.”

“Wasn't he the man who went bankrupt trying to make the place big enough to satisfy his son's fiancée?”

“That's the poor fellow, yes. And so many others bit off a bit more than they expected. It can be a bit of a money pit…but I think we're getting it right now.”

On our way out to join my ghillie, Ian introduced me to a young man with enthusiasm written all over his cheerful face. “Ah, meet David Taylor—our fine chef. He joined us after Rosemary Shragar left—y'know, she had a TV series here called
Castle Cook.
I'm never sure, though, if our guests come here for David's cooking or the hunting!”

David grinned. “Oh—bit o' both. I mean y'can find just about any kind of fish and game y'want on the estate—venison, grouse, pheasant, wood pigeon, seafood galore, wild salmon—our own smoked salmon—and we've even started to bottle our own water now with our own filtration plant. Best water y'll find anywhere in Scotland!”

David gave me a tour of his well-equipped kitchen and then the “wellie room,” where guests dressed for their hunting and fishing adventures, way back in the wild glens. Replicas of enormous salmon caught on the estate were mounted on the walls, with pride of place being given to the castle's “record catch.” He pointed to its elegant plaque. “See if you can understand any of that!”:

“Well—bully for the eighty-year-old Mr. Carmichael,” I said. “But the rest of it's a bit gobbledegooky!”

David laughed. “Ah, well—maybe a day out fishin' on the loch will educate you a wee bit more!”

“I certainly hope so…,” I said, quietly wondering how I'd got myself into this mysterious world with no clue at all about its niceties and nuances.

Anyway, I was finally, if hesitantly, ready for my first day of fly fishing. The huge monoliths of North Harris were bathed in early-morning sunshine as ghillie David Brown and I drove for miles in the estate jeep on a rock-pocked track, deeper and deeper up Glen Meavaig until suddenly, on the brow of the hillock, a broad loch appeared.

“That's the first loch,” said David. “The salmon and sea trout come up here from Sea Loch Meavaig. It's a good stream. Famous for freshwater mussels…very rare. Protected.”

“Seems like an awful long journey for them.”

“More'n two miles, but that's nothin'. There's places where they have to travel twice that distance and more to reach the headwaters where they were first spawned. They keep that memory. It's like a compass—they know exactly where to return f' the female to lay her eggs among the stones and the male to ‘milk' them.”

“Y'mean after all that unbelievable effort to get here there's no actual mating—no little pleasure-bonus!?”

“Oh, sadly, no—the males do their thing over the eggs up a wee burn from the loch and then they all come back here for a while before returnin'—those that have survived—back downstream to the ocean.”

“The whole process is so amazing—the distances they travel, the strength they need…”

“Aye,” said David, chuckling. “Takes almost as much effort as marriage itself!”

“But at least the mating side of marriage is a lot more enjoyable for us humans.”

“Aye, true. Maybe too rewarding. I've had two wives and three children—and another wee bairn on the way.”

“Congratulations,” was all I could think to say.

David gave me a sidelong, somewhat foxy glance and laughed. “Right! Thanks!”

Ahead rose the almost vertical crags of Sron Scourst, hundreds of feet of dark, glacier-gouged gneiss, cracked and striated. Then came a second loch, and broad vistas to the north of the gentler Lewis hills.

“This is our spot—Loch Voshimid. We're over the watershed of the glen here so the fish come up from the Loch Resort on Lewis, another long climb for 'em.”

We parked the jeep by a flimsy-looking, metal-paneled hut. “This is where we have lunch if the weather's bad,” David told me.

“It's not exactly one of your elaborate hunting lodges for the landed gentry, is it?”

“No, indeed it's not, but when the gales are blowin' and the rain is tearin' into ye like steel blades, you'd find it awful warm and cozy. Don't think we'll need it today, though, by the look o' things.”

A boat awaited us by the loch shore. David loaded the fishing gear and together we pushed it out into the water, leapt aboard, and began our journey in search of “the big ones.” Ian had insisted that despite the lateness of the season, it should still be possible to hook a ten-or fifteen-pound salmon. “Don't get too greedy, though,” he'd warned me. “You only get to keep one salmon and two sea trout per rod per day. The rest you catch and release. Estate policy.”

“Fine,” I told him. “One'll do just fine.”

David was less optimistic. Possibly in an effort to assuage my expectations, he suggested that the season was “pretty well gone by now,” that the lack of a breeze would prejudice good casting, and that, if the catch were too large, I might well “lose a fly”!