I‘d grown accustomed to life without my shadow. A world rendered flat by overcast skies. Clouds so dense that it was easy to forget that skies were blue not grey with charcoal clouds.

Then I looked out the window and it was brilliant cobalt. At 3 in the afternoon the day had begun and it stayed that way until 8 when it began to glow golden around the edges, shadows purple and long. I was riding past green fields then, able to appreciate their lushness for the first time. Calves were, skipping, well as close as a cow can skip, a kind of four legged rocking lurch. They were enjoying the sun too. I grinned at them, and they stopped their play, their mothers stopping their munching and starred at me, eyes little pinpricks.

I felt that fullness in that chest, and almost bursting with joy. Perhaps I was finally falling in love with the highlands, as I had been warned I would. But maybe it was all the better for not being love at first sight, the man who asked me if I needed a hot drink as I rode by, the tree suddenly bursting with swallows like a mad Disney fairytale, the silhouettes of mountains, layer upon layer, lying like sleeping beasts.

I wound my way home to our ramshackle bus, and our surrogate granny who always fussed about us being out on the roads in the cold. Warm fire, warm heart.