Changing light and colours on Edinburgh's highest hill
As the days grow shorter and darkness extends its embrace ever further, you might be forgiven for wanting to hunker down under a warm blanket and hibernate until it’s springtime again. But this would be to miss out on one of the best times of year to enjoy the hill.
Winter in Scotland is the best month for being out in the hills, with the low sun casting an alluring light across the landscape. The constantly changing sky is a restless beast, boiling, stirring, shining, and beguiling.
No two moments are the same as you walk up the hill. Every time you look up you are met by a different sky and a changing light. Especially at sunset, when the eternal dance of the sunlight reaches its crescendo and the clouds are first smouldering, then bursting into flames.
The pure sunlight ricochets through the atmosphere, igniting the clouds, and shattering the soaring ice crystals. The light then bursts into a thousand hues: the spectrum reveals its innermost recesses as the sun slips towards the horizon.
A layer of cloud shrouds the far distance as you stand on the summit, looking past the spires and towers of the city. Then just as you think it is all over, the golden disc of the sun appears between the cloud and the horizon, shimmering as it slips towards the place between day and night. It dances its last, while the gathered crowd drinks in the otherworldly glow.
And then it is gone.
People turn and leave, rushing to get down the hill before the darkness comes to exact its toll. But we know better than to depart so soon. The next five minutes are the pièce de résistance. With the sun now lower than the cloud — but itself out of sight — the bright orange rays still hurl themselves forwards, bouncing off the underside of the clouds, illuminating them like a sea of molten magma.
The extinct volcano which we are sitting upon is alive once more, just for a few minutes. The patchwork of glowing, broken clouds above us makes us feel as if we are inside the heart of the volcano, swimming through a pool of lava, looking up to the surface. The clouds are now fading as the sun slips further away.
Reluctantly turning to the dark side of the hill for our descent, we are greeted by an emissary of the night, come to reassure us that wea re not alone: the full moon. Gold has become silver as day has become night. The Sea of Tranquility shines down upon us as the still waters of the North Sea lie before us, sprinkled with flecks of moonlight as the waves lap along the nearby shore.
But the sunset has not yet breathed its last. The bright light of the crescendo has now become the deeper hues of the epilogue as we near the lower slopes of the hill. Edinburgh’s skyline silhouettes itself against the last throes of the day’s light. Oranges have become reds, reds have become purples, and soon even purples will fade into the deepest indigos.
This is the Gloaming.
Street lamps flicker into life below us, and the city is not yet ready to sleep. The darkness of the hill allows us to enjoy the sunset to its full extent. Then — as we slip back into the world of light bulbs, busy people, and buses — the sky darkens, the stars fade, and we lose our ancient ancestral link to the sun, the moon, the wind, and the sky.
Until tomorrow.