There’s nothing quite so beautiful as the completely foreign. If that sounds puzzling, consider the example of the Scottish Hebrides. These islands-the Isles of Lewis and Harris, North Uist, South Uist, Skye, and Mull-off Scotland’s northwest coast are a backpacker’s dream: scenic, unspoiled expanses sprinkled with friendly, Gaelic-speaking communities. At the end of the last ice age, retreating glaciers carved these islands, and the largest and northernmost of the Outer Hebrides, the Isle of Lewis, is perhaps the finest of the glaciers’ work. The island is dotted with hills and lochs (lakes) with edges so smooth, they could only have been created by thousands of years of friction. But the hills and lochs of Lewis are hardly typical: gradual deforestation has replaced the native Scottish pine with peat moss and yellow prickly grass that make the hills glow a fiery orange after a good rainfall. It is this amazing scenery that draws visitors to the Hebrides and gives a place like Lewis its eerie beauty. It’s something so familiar that seems completely and utterly foreign.

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