Faithful readers may recall that last week I was traveling through the Scottish Highlands with my husband and his friend (Almost Elaine?, 9.1.11). When I got home, I looked up the Highlands on Wikipedia, and according to that highly reliable source, the area is “one of the most sparsely populated in Europe.  The average population density in the Highlands and Islands is lower than that of Sweden, Norway, Papua New Guinea and Argentina.”  I am from Maine, which has 43.1 people per square mile, the lowest population density of any state east of the Mississippi River.  The Scottish Highlands and Islands have less than half of that—21 people per square mile.  Just to keep things in perspective, New York City has 27,532.

The three of us left Edinburgh, which has a total population of 486,120, and watched the towns grow smaller as we drove further north: Perth (43,450), Fort Augustus (646), Arisaig (300).  Just beyond Arisaig, we took a 30 minute ferry ride to the Isle of Skye, which marked our entry into the Hebrides, or the Islands.  We drove to the far end of Skye, and boarded a second ferry for the Isle of Lewis, separated from Skye by the Straight of Minch, or, as it’s known in Gaelic An Cuan Sgìth, Cuan na Hearadh, or An Cuan Leòdhasach.  On Skye, the road signs were printed in Gaelic and English.  In Lewis,  they were only in Gaelic.  We were, it seemed, very far from home.

Isle of Skye

The remoteness of the Hebrides is exaggerated by the landscape.  In rural Maine, there are woods, miles and miles of woods that seem to cut clear across the state.  The trees stop you from seeing too far ahead, and what lies beyond the forest line is left to one’s imagination.  Perhaps a little home rests in yonder wood, a curl of smoke seeping from its chimney, a bit of human life.  But there are no woods on the Hebrides.  The Islands are made up of hills that roll on and on with not a tree in sight.  There is no little cabin hiding in the wilderness.  There is no hiding at all.

The Islands are beautiful, with cliffs that fall right into the sea, and the air is soaked with a heavy condensation that never quite clears.  There were island towns clearly marked on the map we’d brought, but when we came upon them they were often no more than two or three houses huddled together in a flat patch of moorish green.  A town didn’t mean a school or a post office or a gas station; it didn’t mean a place to buy a newspaper or deposit a paycheck.  It simply meant a place where someone lived.  The roads were the width of a single car, so in the rare event that you encountered someone coming from the opposite direction, you had to pull over and allow them to squeeze by.  When sheep were moseying down the center, the squeeze was tighter.

Stornoway

After days of this sort of travel, we made our way to Stornoway, the biggest city in the Hebrides, population 8,100.  The first sign that we’d entered a commercial hub was a gas station, which we later learned was one of two in town.  On tiny stone streets, we found a pharmacy as well as a spot that served tea and coffee and grilled cheese.  There was a town arts’ center with an auditorium that played current films.  It was not quite a movie theatre, but it was close.  At what looked like a Chamber of Commerce there was a list posted in the window of everyone in the area who was planning to marry this year, about fifteen couples in all, with a disclaimer stating that if there were objections to any of the unions, they were to be brought to the town council.

We checked in to the Sandwick Bay Guest House at the end of town, which overlooked the old graveyard and the Minch, and then went for dinner.  We ate at a place that was part restaurant, part coffeehouse; it had couches and wi-fi, a menu that featured both haggis and lasagna, and pictures taped to the walls of what was clearly their specialty: an Oreo cookie ice cream sundae with mini-marshmallows.  As we sat there, in this strange blend of Central Perk and local diner, they came.  We ordered whiskies, bundled in our sweaters and our hiking boots, my hair flat from the cap I’d had on all week to combat the mist and the wind, my husband wearing the same jeans for the seventh day straight, and they came dressed to the nines, in skin-tight halter minis, in stockings and eyeliner, in knock-off Louboutins.  They came in twos, threes, fours, fives with metallic clutches and beaded baguettes.  They came laughing and smoking and drinking.  They came toasting jobs and lamenting husbands and forgetting about the kids.  They came flirting and daring and breaking rules.  The ladies came.  It was Saturday night in Stornoway.

Emily Sproch is a writer and a “Sex and the City” tour guide.  Each Friday, she chronicles the fine line between reality and fiction in her column “Almost Carrie.”