A mother and daughter are transformed by a sojourn in western Scotland.
Wind whistled between the tethers, and waves crashed just below.
He came with his young son, and was grieving the death of his wife.
The Hebridean Sea Safari camp on the Isle of Jura.Credit:Murray Orr
Orwell called the island un-get-at-able.
It was as if wed found ourselves inside an illustration in a book of fairy tales.
The history of my people bears little resemblance to theScotlandof the American imagination.
The Gulf of Corryvreckan.Murray Orr
I grew up with tales of agricultural poverty, brutal cold, and inherited depression.
My great-great-grandfather hanged himself in the barn one winter.
By the grace of that wailing infant, the rest of us got to exist.
Kittiwakes, and a lone gull, perched on a rock.Murray Orr
What does it mean to be from a place?
I didnt want to claim Scotland; I hardly felt I had the right to it.
It led to a spiral staircase tucked into a corner turret.
From left: Glenapp Castle, a hotel in Ayrshire, Scotland; the entrance to Glenapp’s lounge.Murray Orr
Neale described his family as newcomers to the area, as theyd only been farming there for seven generations.
(Janets family, whove farmed in the Luce Valley since 1624, has been around for 11.)
Because these were breeding cows, their posh names always referenced their ancestry.
Airyolland Farm.Murray Orr
So frequent were the showers, my daughter started calling herself the rainbow hunter.
Turner and the Impressionists, she treated plantings like brushstrokes of color.
Immediately, my daughter began crafting a story.
A garden at Glenapp Castle.Murray Orr
My daughter, who is obsessed with Greek mythology, kept crying out, I see Charybdis!
Approaching our camp from the water was thrilling.
My daughter was enthralled by the practicalities of island life.
A suite at Glenapp Castle.Murray Orr
During the cold nights, we appreciated the ritual of nestling ourselves beneath our many layers.
We had come to a thin place, but we needed thick blankets to sleep there.
In truth, we had seen all kinds of weather, meteorological and emotional.
From left: A resident of Airyolland Farm; Airyolland Farm.Murray Orr
My daughter vacillated between stupefied awe at our surroundings and moments of sublime meltdown.
And I meansublime there was something humbling and terrifying about their force.
Perhaps the moral is that there are some kinds of wildness that should be allowed to remain wild.
From left: Duck with carrot and Chinese greens, served in the castle dining room; Glenapp Castle staffer Kevin Boyd recites Robert Burns’s “Ode to a Haggis” above the titular delicacy.Murray Orr
As Orwell put it, un-get-at-able.
These forces are not made to live by our whims, they exist to surpass and shape us.
Theyre there not to be tamed by us, but to transform us.
A red deer on the Isle of Jura.Murray Orr
As if an uninhabited island wasnt remote enough, he remarked.
They had to hole themselves up in a tiny cave at the end of it.
The island was rugged and windswept, a thin place where the noise of others had grown faint.
The Sea Safari boat.Murray Orr
But when you travel with a child, you cannot ask for silence as you approach the sublime.
From left: A life preserver on the island of Easdale; Mia Leng, Hebridean Sea Safari’s resident marine biologist.Murray Orr
A lolling seal, seen from Glenapp’s Sea Safari boat.Murray Orr
Ellenabeich, a village on the island of Seil, part of Scotland’s Inner Hebrides archipelago.Murray Orr
Barnhill, the Jura farmhouse where George Orwell completed his novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four.”.Murray Orr
An alfresco lunch on the boat.Murray Orr
Dolphins bob alongside the safari boat.Murray Orr
From left: Mark Littlejohn, the Sea Safari camp manager; the Cave of Saint Cormac, on the island of Eilean Mòr.Murray Orr
From left: Edinburgh Castle, as seen from the 100 Princes Street hotel in Edinburgh; a guest room at the hotel.Murray Orr
