Ice-scraped gneiss

Adam Nicolson’s ‘love letter’ to some small, remote, uninhabited Scottish islands inherited from his father, illuminates the depth and richness of natural and human history that can accrete in even such a barren place.  ‘Ice-scraped gneiss’ conveys millennia of weather work.

‘The ice-scraped gneiss shelters little more than dark peat hollows and sour grass.’

See also a quote-rich mosaic review of this magnificent, entrancing book: a love letter to islands and a paean to the sea. 

Source: Adam Nicolson, Sea Room: An Island Life (London: Harper Collins, 2013 (2002)), p. 18