There is something about rock foundations and mountains that transcend our lives. For millenia, Eastern temples have been built in mountains; people climb mountains to find wisdom, the answers to Life's questions. Mountain pathways are the source of pilgrimage for walkers around the World; drovers walked their holloways for centuries; and they are a visual representation of the original foundation from which all life flows, something indestructible.
Witnessing something that has survived seismic shifts, wars, migration, flood and famine is to behold a solid part of the world. Holding on to something still, something steadfast feels safe. That is something very rare in 2025 as I write this. I think that is why so many visitors to the Outer Hebrides and Scotland stop at stone ruins, take photos, and reflect.
There is a stone croft house just down the road from my own. Not a cyclist or walker passes without a photo. It overlooks Loch Erisort on the Isle of Lewis - decaying corrugated iron roof, partially caved in, and a tree sprouting through the chimney. Visitors find such ruins aesthetic, an artistic expression of the land. But for us, they are reminders of violence, starvation and death. The stone markers of a family who once lived and loved in the village, now gone because of poverty. Those houses are the graveyards of families who were torn from their homes to make way for sheep. The household ruins depict lives lost. These photos are bones across the landscape of the Hebrides, a reminder of the desecration of colonisation.
And yet, still, the stone remains - our Earth's origins; witness to our genesis.
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