Windswept: Life, Nature and Deep Time in the Scottish Highlands

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On the west coast of Scotland, Annie Worsley takes on a smallholding after leaving a busy life in academia. The land is shaped and governed by light, wind and water, and by the shifting line where sea meets shore. Windswept stays close to what it means to live within those forces, day after day, in a place of wild weather and hard edges.

She lays quartz stones in a river to catch moonlight and draw salmon, watches otters playing tag across the beach, and wakes to the feral bellowing of stags. The present is threaded with deeper time as she moves through the story of the Highlands: valleys carved by glaciers, rivers cutting paths through mountains, the earliest people finding ways to live here.

In this rugged landscape, nature sets the terms, and human life is an ongoing negotiation with what the land allows.