There are places that people call home that cannot be reached by car, and an atmosphere can be felt when you visit them. Islands have it in abundance. The smaller the community the easier it is to feel. It is hard to pin it down but it is , at least in part drawn from the local people’s relationship with their environment. People in remote locations have to interact with nature in a way that is wholly different from those of us living in cities. The natural world forces its self into their way of life. I always envy the laid back way in which a person from the Western Isles greets the news of a cancelled ferry. A few of them used to sit in my front room in Ullapool for a day or two whilst a  November storm passed and they could get home, get back to work. Contrast this with the childish sulk seen at any railway station when the morning train is half and hour late.

Inverie on the Knoydart peninsula is one of these atmospheric communities. Access is either by small boat from Mallaig, or on foot for 15 miles through an area that even Highlanders call remote. Nature presses in on you when you are in the community of Inverie. No street lights shield you from the night sky, whose penetrating gaze fixes you on the walk back from the pub. The forests border the top of the 1 street village, often reaching to within 20m of the sea. The whole village has an air of fragility to it, sandwhiched between Loch Nevis  and the hills.

Knoydart, a vast peninsula of stunning natural scenery and wildlife is also a place that is owned and managed by those who live their. Community residents work along side wildlife organisations, stalkers and foresters in The Knoydart Foundation to manage the environment – natural and human – in a way that benefits them. The outlook is decidedly long term, and nature has high priority.

The feeling of nature blending in to become an integral part of everyday life is what creates the atmosphere of Inverie, North Ronaldsay, Benbecula and a thousand other isolated communities. If the rest of us could take a lesson from these places make it this: give nature a space in our own environment; let it breath and remember that it has its place here amoung our everyday. Maybe next time the snow or rain stops a few trains we can be learn to be a little more relaxed about it and enjoy the time it can give us.