In the center of the Scottish Highlands is Cairngorms National Park, the highest mountains in the United Kingdom. There’d not been much snow this year, but March still had fierce winds and snow. Poet Edwin Muir’s Scotland’s Winter starts:
Now the ice lays its smooth claws on the sill,
The sun looks from the hill
Helmed in his winter casket,
And sweeps his arctic sword across the sky.
Cairgorms
In the west Highlands is tucked Glen Sheil, its Munros also covered in snow. Few can capture natural imagery as Mary Oliver, The whole poem is magic, but here’s a bit of White-Eyes:
* * *
while the clouds—
* * *
thicken, and begin to fall
into the world below
like stars, or the feathers
of some unimaginable bird
that loves us,
that is asleep now, and silent—
that has turned itself
into snow.
In Glen Sheil
Blowing across the ridge
So out of the snowy Highlands and on to the coast on the Isle of Skye where there was still snow up high on the peaks. National poet Robert Burns had something to say about that.
My heart's in the Highlands, wherever I go.
Farewell to the mountains, high-cover'd with snow,
Sunset on Skye