Waxing on Inverness

The Highlands are overwhelmingly beautiful. Ineffably so.

Last weekend was the first of the two IFSA Butler excursions for this semester. We left early Friday morning from St. Andrews, traveled through Dundee and typical central lowland countryside, and stopped at an ASDA in Perth (the Scottish equivalent to Wal-Mart. Seriously) to meet the other students from Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Sterling. While sitting in the little cafe, eating a blueberry muffin, I spotted a familiar visage. Sarah Dowling! She had come from the University of Glasgow, where she is studying studio art for the semester. I almost knocked over a chair as I stumbled over to greet her (got a high five from Brennon for that), and we caught up a bit on each other's lives and abroad experiences. Talking to her was a little surprising; she had picked up a pretty strong Glasgow accent during her month her, and I couldn't help smiling a little whenever she used classic Scottish inflection and phrasing.

I won't get into detail of everything on the trip; it would be a lengthy task for me to do justice to everything and, I'd imagine, a little tedious for you, dear reader. I'll just name some highlights.

We traveled to the Hermitage in Dunkeld, which is a fir forest arboretum located on the banks of the Braan River. What I remember most distinctly is the air: cold, crisp, smelling of pine and moss and ferns. It resembled a California forest, with giant, well-established trees and gnarled roots. The pine needle floor hushed our footsteps, allowing us to hear very distinctly the rush of the waterfall, tiny particles racing through crevices and soaking the mossy stones.

But I'm waxing. We traveled by bus everywhere we went, and like I said, I couldn't get over the beauty of the place, and took to snapping pictures out the window of the bus. None of them really turned out any good. We listened to Snow Patrol and a variety of Scottish folk, when we weren't listening to the tour guide tell stories about the landmarks we were passing, or going into detail about how certain clans got their names. I remember dozing on one of these occasions, waking only to catch certain, very disparate details of a story involving an archer, a crocodile, a king (to whom the crocodile belonged. I think.), a hapless family, and a block of peat. My guess is that the king challenged the archer to kill the crocodile, who had recently been crowned king on the block of peat, creating a dual power system. Having killed the crocodile, the hapless family stole the block of peat, to memorialize their dead king, and vowed to seek their revenge on the actual king. The king, furious at the insolence of the hapless family, ordered the block of peat to be placed on their heads, and again asked the archer to "do his worst." The archer, formerly under the impression that his king was a good guy, realized that this was in fact not the case, as it was his own hapless family that stood beneath the block of peat. So, in order to kill two birds with one stone, he shot the block of peat off their heads, thus relieving them of their burden (both their metaphysical commitment to a reptile, and the physical commitment of having a block on their heads, a block head, a head, a head on a block, a block block).

Some details may have been fudged along the way.

Anyway.

We drove about 2 hours to see our childhoods chug by. The Jacobite Express, also known as the Hogwarts Express, went over a viaduct featured in the HP films, as about 80 students stood perched on a hillside and sighed collectively.

We visited a sheep farm on Saturday. The sheep, however, were really background noise to the sheep dogs, upon which all of us lavished our affections for about an hour. We literally swarmed the place, engaging our nurturing tendencies as puppies were passed around and dogs zipped skillfully around our ankles. We had the chance to shear sheep ourselves, which we were more or less successful at. We left with heavy hearts, making vows to do this again one day, perhaps setting out to find shepherds and shepherdesses to woo and marry.

The final experience I want to detail is Loch Ness and the Urquhart Castle. We took a 30 minute cruise on the loch, on boats with a top deck in open air, and a bottom deck with windows. I stayed the entire time on the top deck, as I couldn't imagine descending below and putting glass between me and the scenery. It really was that beautiful. The wind blew relentlessly as we wound ourselves up into a giddy high, watching the shoreline go by with increasing admiration and deep, abiding awe. Again, many pledged to find a way to live here, somewhere, and settle down with a Scotsman or woman. It was so invigorating.

Urquhart Castle I approached more solemnly. It's a castle in ruins on the banks of Loch Ness, destroyed in the 17th century to prevent the Jacobites from using it as a stronghold. I found myself exploring it alone, which was fine by me, as I seemed to have a lot on my mind. I stood for a while, beneath the ramparts of the castle with a view onto the loch, and kind of meditated. It was good to be alone for just a while, collecting my thoughts and marshaling my senses. I wanted to take some of this with me, make it part and parcel of me. I think I understand why so many people on the trip sighed from the depths of their being when they saw beauty like this. It's not enough just to see it, admire it. We have an innate desire to become familiar, become intimate with the objects of our admiration. Being able to call the Highlands home would be more than just living in a beautiful place. It would intertwine with your identity, become enmeshed inside the tiny cells and particles of your nature. It's the same way with people: it's not enough to admire from a distance; we attempt to coalesce with others that we see as beautiful. We may become them, and they us.

Anyway, the trip was wonderful and I think I came away from it the better. Returning to St. Andrews was a bit of a let-down, though. Oh, the woes of academic rigor! I'm trying to play catch-up in International Relations, having started late, and I'm feeling a little anxious about that. I miss Ohio, but I really am having a good time here. I've been writing a good deal, more than I anticipated, and I've found it truly to have a cathartic effect on me.

Until next time, be well.