After giving up a hectic life as a journalist in Europe and Hollywood in the late Sixties to return to his boyhood love of nature, Mike Tomkies found off the west coast of Scotland a remote island. There he rebuilt a rotting wooden croft which sheep had used for shelter from the bitter Atlantic winds and began a new way of life, observing nature, that was to last to the present day. He tracked wildcats, stags, foxes, made friends with the seals and taught a young injured sparrowhawk to hunt for itself. It was the spirit, the will of this tiny hawk that taught Tomkies what it takes for any of us to be free. Fishing, growing his own food to augment a diet of edible wild plants, battling through stormy seas in a small boat, he learned that he could survive in Britain's harshest environment. This book, the beginning of a Scottish odyssey, tells the story of the man who dared to take the first step away from urban routines many of us only dream about.