Diana and her hunting dogs by Jan Fyt

Just back from nearly two weeks excavating on the Isle of Harris and Lewis in the Outer Hebrides Island of Western Scotland. Lovely, breathtaking, amazement - how can one come up with the words to describe it? There is a sense of wildness and necessary self-sufficiency that is conjured up in the mind when seeing the vast salt-marsh, the sandy Scottish machair plains, the steep rise of the highland. The people primarily speak Scottish Gaelic. There are black-faced sheep everywhere, defiant to cars and people. And mostly importantly there are dogs. Lots of them. All seeming clones of each other: black and white piebald, long collie faces, bright eyes and desperate to corral sheep. Walking along the rocky hills with the cold ocean breeze coming at me I fancied myself a sort of Diana.