Wild is the Wind

Quiet Menorca has long captivated artists, enchanting them with its dramatic skies and seducing them with its picturesque villages. Today, the island is still up to its old tricks, but it’s found a new audience

- By Stephanie Rafanelli

I wake to Mahón's rooftops, crowned each morning by the first Spanish light. Dawn in this island village is a dissipating memory-a Rorschach test of clouds, backlit by the fiery rising sun that pours through the Moorish windows of my bedroom. I am only 43 nautical miles east of Mallorca, yet on this flat raft of land I feel entirely adrift from the world.

It's easy to be deceived by Menorca, a quaint pastoral island of rinsed blues and Celtic greens that was declared a biosphere reserve by UNESCO in 1993. Its pastures are filled with cattle and wheat and punctuated with whitewashed windmills. The Romans christened it Insula Minor, Lesser Island, as if forever bequeathing it plain-Jane status next to Ibiza and Mallorca, its alluring Balearic sisters. And yet the world has always landed on its shores. Over the course of a millennium, it passed from the Arabs to the Aragonese to the Brits, who left behind their gin habit and contributed a smattering of words to Menorquí, the Catalan dialect of sa's and es's spoken, in whistling gusts, only on this island. For years it has attracted primarily British holidaygoers seeking its sharp and reliable sun, shallow blue waters, and earlier nights.

But elemental forces lurk here too. Last night, a storm unleashed its raw power on the tiny, tranquil island. Storms here are wild shows of energy, fueled by the infamous and annihilating north wind that can bring with it fleets of cumulus clouds that race like schooners across a purple-streaked sky. Its name-