JUST back from the inaugural Harris Mountain Festival, and while the rest of the country was bathed in warm sunshine the archipelago of the Hebrides lay under a grim, dark cloud. Ho-hum.
One of the duties I had on Harris was to officially open the new offices of the North Harris Trust, an organisation that represents one of the more successful of Scotland's community buy-outs, and in my speech I made a call for North Harris to become Scotland's third national park.
The North Harris community had previously been encouraged in their aspirations for national park status by SNP Ministers, and had a very positive result to a local consultation on the issue.
Unfortunately, Western Isles Council isn't so keen, which is sad, because the community in North Harris is extremely positive and the Western Isles, in general, need something to attract more visitors to the wonderful array of natural attractions that are on show there.
I suspect I had those national park aspirations in mind as I took the opportunity of a walk round the coast at Hushinish. I couldn't help thinking of a long and lanky mountain man, bearded and blue-eyed, intense in word and thought.
A man who never lost his Scottish accent and on all his travels carried two books with him - the New Testament and the works of Robert Burns, a curious pairing.
I would argue that John Muir was Scotland's greatest export to America, a man who emigrated to Wisconsin from Dunbar in East Lothian at the age of 11; a man who eventually became an all-American hero - the father figure of the modern ecological movement, the father figure of the modern conservation movement and the father figure of the worldwide national parks movement.
And it's in that last context that John Muir came to mind as I tramped around the cliffs, the machairs and the hills of North Harris.
In good summer weather the highways and byways of the Outer Hebrides offer sensational walking opportunities.
The Hushinish peninsula of Harris is typical, boasting a rich mix of landscape types made even more memorable by the immense seascapes that front them.
It's this blend of land and sea that makes the Western Isles such a special place and so worth protecting.
As far as I'm aware John Muir never visited the Outer Isles, but I have little doubt he would have been captivated by the magic of Hushinish, wandering over the cliffs and machairs that lay close to the pulsing rhythms of the sea where the spirit of the Celt is not yet dead.
Hushinish is also one of our finest examples of an environment that has resulted from its oceanic weather conditions. Machair abounds and the bays boast superb sweeps of white shell sand.
The area faces the unoccupied island of Scarp, which dominates the mouth of Loch Resort. A few years ago there were as many as 50 people living there and the community had its own school. Today it's deserted.
John Muir was never slow to publicise the special qualities of an area, believing that the more people who visited such areas the more people who would be prepared to lobby for their protection from unsuitable developments.
I wished he had been with me as I left the pier at Hushinish and climbed over the cliffs of Rubha Ruad and Geodha Roaga.
We could have climbed the grassy slopes to the summit of Cnoc Mor and surveyed the scene around us. I'm sure Long John would, by now, be rhapsodising in typical Muir fashion, thrilled by the wheeling seabirds and the views of purple land and green ocean.
I often wonder if things would have been different in Scotland if Muir has never left these shores?
Would our Highlands and Islands be better protected against a whole swathe of commercial developments that ignore the cultural, scenic and wildlife qualities of the place, attractions that bring tens of thousands of visitors here?
Was America's gain Scotland's loss? Would John Muir have contacted Alex Salmond and invited him to come and sit here on the headland of Rubh' an Tighe of Hushinish, to gaze and to wonder and enjoy the natural beauty of the place?
I think he may have done - perhaps it's not too late
