In my youth, Druim Fraoich – or Heather Ridge – was often full of noises. At night, there might be the twanging of guitars or the pounding of an accordion coming from Ness Hall, built in the 1960s on the site of a former quarry. During the day, its stone cliffs – where my father started work with pickaxe and hammer at the age of 14 – were home to twites and sparrows. Their chirping would accompany me as I dawdled home from Cross primary school in the neighbouring village.

For all that the ceilidh music has long hushed, Ness Hall having closed a few years ago, the birds still perch there, an insistent chorus as I walk my childhood route to school. I stride through the village of North Dell, aware that some are still crofting there, though in a different way from their predecessors. Polytunnels are now as common as byres and outhouses, and pigs, rather than cattle, are churning up soil near old school walls.

It would be easy to be negative about some of these changes, to note that, according to a recent study by Donald Macritchie, a local maths teacher, the population of north-west Lewis has declined from 2,445 in 1979 to 1,610 in January 2019. More than a third of its residents are over the age of 65.

‘This isle is full of noises’ – the annual charity tractor race makes its way through the village of South Dell. Photograph: Ali Finlayson

Yet that would be to overlook the district’s spirit, the way its residents have tried to stem the outward drift of people from these shores. The community took over the running of the Galson estate, between the Butt of Lewis lighthouse and the stone monolith at Ballantrushal, in 2007, employing more than 30 people where no jobs existed before, and finding a new use for Cross primary, which closed due to falling rolls in 2011.

At present, the old school building is again full of noises. Drills and hammers are transforming it into a new museum for Comunn Eachdraidh Nis, the Ness historical society. When it opens in early 2020, there will be photographs and exhibits displayed in the rooms where I used to sit and peer out of windows, watching twites and sparrows, hordes of starlings clouding stretches of moor and croftland nearby.