'Spiorad aird nam Murchan' Part 21: An Tilleadh gu Solas

The Return To Light

Introduction

Thank you for waiting for me.

The last few weeks have been a study in silence; some chosen, some imposed. I’m deeply grateful for those who held space for my absence, who messaged, who defended quietly when the noise of detractors tried to drown out the work. Let’s not dwell there. I am returning….a’ tilleadh, to the practice and to the peninsula, with a steadier pulse and a renewed willingness to listen.

Returning is not only a movement back; it is a way of seeing. It is the practice of circling, of letting place deepen you as you deepen with place. To return is to affirm, to take stock, to shed what was never yours, and to recommit to the long form…. the slow unfolding of a body of work, and the longer softening of the self that tends it. For photographers and artists alike, returning is an ethic and a method: the discipline of walking the same hill, of standing in the same estuary light, of naming what is changing and what is constant. In my work across Spiorad Àird nam Murchan, that has meant year after year with the same beaches, the same fenced crofts and latches, the same winter roads to Sanna and Portuairk, the same lighthouse wind. The peninsula gives back to those who come back.

Today I want to explore returning; a’ tilleadh, as language and lore, as creative method, as an ecological rhythm, as civic necessity, and as balm.

1) Defining “Returning” · A’ tilleadh in language, lore, and the Highlands

In Scottish Gaelic, till is “to return”; a’ tilleadh is its verbal noun; returning, the ongoing action of coming back. It’s the word I hear beneath my boots each time the tarmac narrows west of Salen: a promise of repetition with difference, the looping path that is never quite the same twice.

Gaelic culture has long framed returning as seasonal, communal, and sacred. The summer migration to the àirigh….. the shielings, was a yearly return to upland pastures, a practice of transhumance woven through women’s work, song, and the calendar fires of Beltane and Samhain. The shieling way of life embodied a cyclical intimacy with ground, animals, and weather, a rhythm of departure and homecoming that renewed both people and pasture.

That seasonal spirituality rings through Carmina Gadelica, where blessings and invocations move with the year; lighting the hearth, milking the cow, smooring the fire, each prayer a way of returning the day to meaning. Season after season, the words come back, and by coming back make us at home again.

Across West Lochaber and Ardnamurchan, the place-names carry these returns. Kilchoan - Cille Chòmhghain, remembers St Comghan and an old parish church that gathered the living and the dead for centuries; the ruins still look over the bay, the cemetery still recurs with nettle and story. Portuairk - Port Uairce, catches the last westing of the mainland and looks toward Rùm and Eigg. These names are not static labels; they are routes, repeated.

2) Creative returns: Persistence, constraint, and seeing beyond the obvious

To return to a place or theme is to choose depth over novelty, attention over accumulation. Environmental psychologist–geographer Yi-Fu Tuan called this bond topophilia; the affective ties between person and place that shape perception and care. His work reminds us that love of place is not sentimental but constitutive; it’s how we come to know, and therefore how we act.

In practice, this looks like “slow looking”: patient, iterative attention that refuses the first glance and invites new detail to surface…. changes in dune marram, shifts in kelp lines, a winter shadow you’ve never noticed on Ben Hiant’s flanks. In museum education and field practice alike, slow looking strengthens meaning-making and critical noticing; as a discipline, it’s perfect for the field artist and the camera-walker.

Returning is also a compositional constraint that liberates expression. Rephotography (repeat photography) asks us to stand again at the same station, to place the tripod feet in old holes, to hold timing, tide, and angle in mind…. and to let difference declare itself. Ecologists, geographers, and artists have used this method for a century to reveal landscape change; its rigour becomes poetry when you press the shutter and the world answers with what has altered and what abides.

There is, of course, a season for ranging; the early creative years of tasting places, techniques, ideas…. but the deeper practice comes when you choose a home watershed, a lexicon, and stay. On the far west, the peninsula rewards persistence; the obvious falls away, and something truer enters the frame.

3) The act of returning to a creative space · A decade with Ardnamurchan

My own returns here are now measured in tides and winters. Portuairk’s path to Sanna has known my boots in rain and blue blaze, in April skylark and December squall. At Sanna’s ring of beaches and black gabbro, I’ve watched machair wake and sleep; I’ve learned the way dune grasses speak wind to you if you stand long enough. The lighthouse has been a compass even when closed, its basalt foreshore turning storm into standing waves that insist on shutter speeds you had not thought to choose. (If you know, you know.)

Kilchoan / Cille Chòmhghain; its scattered lanes, the old church on the knoll, the ferry wake threading the Sound of Mull…. has tugged me back to what a community remembers and what it lets go. Returning here over ten years has been a creative decision and a psychological one: saying this is my grammar of light, my apprenticeship to a living place.

4) “Returning” in Gaelic culture, history, folklore, and toponymy

Beyond shielings, Gaelic folklore is rich with patterns of recurrence: the cycling festivals; the yearly rounds of work and worship; the way song “comes back” with the season. The Gaelic Otherworld—John Gregorson Campbell’s collected lore…. shows how Highland belief sees the world as layered, the visible and invisible returning and interpenetrating; calendars of saints and seasons thread through tales where the old year’s leaving returns as the new year’s blessing.

Toponymy also returns us to origin. Trustworthy Gaelic forms and spellings, gathered and standardised by Ainmean-Àite na h-Alba, are themselves an act of cultural returning: a bringing back of names to usage and sign, based on local knowledge and historical evidence. When I write Àird nam Murchan or Cille Chòmhghain or Port Uairce, I’m joining that corrective return.

And in the old prayers of Carmina Gadelica, return is gratitude in motion: the same blessing said over a different day, the same rhythm sanctifying work as it turns. The returning of words makes a place of time.

5) Returning as an environmental rhythm · Seasons, light, migrations

Nature is the teacher of return. Today the winter solstice tipped the year: on 21 December 2025 at 15:03 GMT, astronomical winter began; from that moment, the light lengthens again. We mark it not because the dark is bad but because the turning returns hope to the sky’s edge.

Here in the far west, returns are everywhere: the revolving choreography of storms and calms off the Hebrides; the sway of sea and sky the lighthouse faces with basalt composure. Seals haul out on familiar skerries and beaches year on year, protected under Scottish law at designated haul-out sites around our coasts…. and their blunt, wise faces feel like neighbours met again.

Some returns are knife-sharp with poignancy. The orca known as John Coe; with the distinctive notch at the base of his dorsal and that missing slice of fluke…. still patrols Hebridean waters, often with Aquarius, the two last-known members of Scotland’s West Coast Community orcas. This year brought sightings off Ardnamurchan and the Sound of Rum, and even the relief of a reunion after weeks apart. Their coming back is both miracle and warning.

Birds return too. The crex-crex rasp of corncrakes finds the Hebrides and the northwest each spring, thanks to careful work with crofters to shape breeding-friendly meadows; 2023 saw the first rise in Scottish corncrake numbers in five years, and 2024–25 brought more returns to Coll, Uist, and beyond. The call is the sound of a species returning to itself.

And beneath it all, the fish come home: Atlantic salmon still read their natal rivers, a feat of precision and memory that feels like the ancient heart of a’ tilleadh itself. Scotland’s salmon are in crisis, numbers returning have plummeted since the 1970s, but the life-history is a parable of fidelity to place. On the River Shiel at Acharacle, the short, beautiful link from Loch Shiel to Loch Moidart still holds that story, even as conservationists fight for its future.

6) Returning as attentiveness to environmental change

To return repeatedly is also to witness, and to tell the truth. Across the UK, we are already living with warmer averages, wetter winters, and rising seas; Scotland’s last decade has been around 1 °C warmer than the 1961–1990 baseline, with winters around 29% wetter, and sea levels continuing to rise. In the Met Office’s “State of the UK Climate 2024,” extremes are no longer exceptions but expected annual features.

Looking forward, the UKCP18 projections point to the same direction of travel: warmer, wetter winters; hotter, drier summers; and intensifying rainfall events…. impacts that play out viscerally in river catchments like Loch Shiel, in coastal townships, in croft drains that carry brown water longer into spring. The projections are now available at high resolution for the UK, and researchers continue to refine them; yet for artists the call is simple: return, record, repeat.

This is where rephotography becomes civic: placing yesterday’s image against today’s not to say “then was better” but to say “this is what is.” Alaska’s national parks have used repeat photography for a century to track ice retreat and vegetation change; heritage scholars now treat rephotography as a conservation tool. We can do likewise in Ardnamurchan: the same fence post, the same beach profile, the same burn after a storm.

7) Returning people · Against depopulation and for thriving communities

Places need their people to return. The Highlands and Islands have lived a long, uneven story of out-migration. In response, the Scottish Government has launched an Addressing Depopulation Action Plan (2024) to support sustainable communities through place-based action, and partners from councils to Highlands and Islands Enterprise are focusing on population retention and growth, especially in at-risk areas like parts of West Lochaber. [gov.scot], [highland.gov.uk]

Housing sits at the heart of return. The Rural & Islands Housing Action Plan (2023) commits to 110,000 affordable homes by 2032, 10% in rural and island areas; paired with targeted efforts for key workers and community-led delivery. Councils recognise the housing emergency’s link to depopulation; Argyll & Bute has been explicit about the need for bolder action and resources. [gov.scot], [argyll-bute.gov.uk]

Evidence keeps accumulating. Regional profiles show decades-long drifts: Lochaber’s 2016–2041 projection, for example, points to decline without intervention, and the Highland Council’s summaries underline the demographic squeeze, more older residents, fewer young families…. especially away from the Inner Moray Firth. Any real reversal will need housing, transport, digital connectivity, meaningful work, and childcare; and the imaginative capital to picture a life here. [highlandcpp.org.uk], [highland.gov.uk]

There are bright returns to learn from. Community ownership has enabled repopulation where market logic failed: Eigg has grown since its 1997 buyout; Knoydart has roughly doubled in 25 years, pairing nature recovery with community enterprise. These are stories of people returning to agency, and of land returning to serve its residents. [bbc.com], [thenational.scot]

And policy thinking is maturing. The National Islands Plan keeps population as a core objective; new academic work has distilled principles for repopulation initiatives, while civic groups argue for targeted “Repopulation Priority Areas.” Place-based measures matter because returning is local, specific, and lived. [gov.scot], [islandstud...ournal.org]

8) Returning as a psychological practice in a fast world

In a time of relentless novelty, returning can be radical self-care. The mind steadies when the feet know the path; the breath deepens when the horizon is familiar. Tuan’s topophilia again helps us name it: attachment to place is a wellspring of meaning, and meaning, in turn, is a buffer against the frictions of a sped-up world. Slow looking, repeated walks, re-seeing in changing light—these are practices as much for wellbeing as for art.

To return is not to retreat; it is to proceed with roots.

9) Conclusion · Returning as creative ethic and bond with Àird nam Murchan

I am returning to this series, to the camera and notebook, to the long grammar of fences, latches, beaches, lighthouses, and winter light. A’ tilleadh is not a single act but the cadence of this work….. its hope and its honesty. I come back to Ardnamurchan because it keeps changing me back.

And so, a small poem for this threshold of light:

Returning / A’ Tilleadh
I walk the road beyond Salen, narrow as a vow,
and the peninsula lifts its dark, basalt shoulder
rain stuttering the loch into braille.

In Portuairk the houses are commas in a sentence
the sea keeps rewriting. Sanna is a blank page of shell,
machair stitching colour into the margins.

The lighthouse keeps time with its one, long breath.
Seals return to the old rocks, glossed with tide.
Somewhere offshore John Coe carves the same line
through water, a history written on his fin.

I place the tripod feet in last year’s sand.
The wind is a hand on my shoulder.
The shutter is a door I open, again and again,
until the light steps through and knows my name.

A call to you: Where do you return? Which places, themes, or ideas keep calling you back, and how has that persistence changed your practice? What has returning taught you to notice about light, about yourself, about community?

I’d love to hear your reflections in the comments.

Bibliography (Harvard style)

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Tishman, S. (2017). Slow Looking: The Art and Practice of Learning Through Observation. New York: Routledge.

Tuan, Y.-F. (1990 [1974]). Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes, and Values. New York: Columbia University Press.

West Highland Peninsulas (Tourism). (n.d.). ‘Things to see & do in Ardnamurchan’ and Sanna Bay information pages. Available at: https://www.westhighlandpeninsulas.com/ (Accessed 16 December 2025). [westhighla...nsulas.com]

Wild About Lochaber / Wild About Ardnamurchan. (n.d.). ‘Portuairk to Sanna’ route and ‘Sanna Bay’ entry. Available at: https://www.wildlochaber.com and https://www.wildardnamurchan.com (Accessed 14 December 2025). [wildlochaber.com], [wildardnamurchan.com]

Wikipedia (curated local pages; accessed for Gaelic forms and context). ‘Kilchoan’; ‘Portuairk’. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilchoan ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuairk (Accessed 12 December 2025). [en.wikipedia.org], [en.wikipedia.org]

Additional sources cited in-text:
— Marine Scotland NMPi haul‑out mapping layer (for designated sites): https://marine.gov.scot/?q=maps/446 (Accessed 12 December 2025).
— Scottish Field (2024). ‘Two orcas spotted off Ardnamurchan’.
— ORCA (2025). ‘John Coe and Aquarius reunited’. [marine.gov.scot] [scottishfield.co.uk] [orca.org.uk]

Notes: Gaelic diacritics and forms follow AÀA guidance where available; place‑name etymologies are left unasserted where scholarship is uncertain. All ecological and policy data are linked to sources current at the time of writing.

Extended Work