17 July 2011

Scotland

I've been listening to BBC Radio Scotland a lot lately.  I don't just love the accent - it feels like home.  The more I listen to it, the more I find myself wishing that I could live there.  Not for the rest of my life - my family is in America - but for at least a year, or possibly two.

I visited Edinburgh in 1995 at the end of a very significant relationship.  I had been convinced that he was the one I'd be with forever.  He was from England, and I was from a rural New England town where most of my peers' parents worked at the local light bulb factory.  He fascinated me, and I loved being in the company of someone who had a different view of the world.  He was intelligent, and I indulged in many, many hours of dialogue with him - whatever time he would give me, I showed up for it.  I didn't know what to do when the relationship ended horribly, abruptly, and completely, so I traveled.  I made no reservations, I just left.

I took a bus to Boston, a plane to London, and a train from Victoria Station to Edinburgh.  As I crossed the Tay Bridge in Dundee heading north, I was transfixed.  The further north I went the more amazed I was by the beauty of the coastline, and I was shocked by the lack of real-estate development overlooking the water.  It was mile after mile of yellow fields and green grass on the left and towering brown cliffs and blue ocean views on the right.  The gigantic bales of hay - in enormous, bound circles - I marveled at how much they must weigh and wondered what sort of equipment lifted and hauled them.  I attended a Midwestern university and had friends who actually grew up on farms, and I'd never seen anything like that.

A man on the train saw my Gary Larson day calendar and asked me if I'd ever read anything by Bill Bryson.  I hadn't at the time, but promptly purchased The Lost Continent while I was in Edinburgh.  During our short conversation the man also told me that I looked Scottish - that I had the complexion of a Scotswoman, and I was very flattered.  Of course, when I returned home and told an English friend of the comment, I was informed that it simply meant that I had ruddy cheeks.  But at the time it felt like a small confirmation that I belonged there.

I only spent two nights in Edinburgh, and I didn't have enough money to visit the tourist attractions, so I spent a lot of time just walking.  I loved the gardens at the foot of the castle.  I sat on the top floor of a 2-story Burger King (on Princes Street, I think?) and marveled at the juxtaposition of eating fast food whilst overlooking a medieval castle.  It felt wrong - almost disrespectful.  Tasty, but disrespectful.

I visited the National Library briefly and wished that I had more time to research my family name.  My Great Uncle Bill had just published his extensive genealogical research about our family right before I went to Scotland, and I hadn't yet taken the time to read it.  If I had, I would have found that my ancestry goes back to the late sixteenth century in a small town called Stonehaven, just south of Aberdeen on the east coast. 

It was probably the first trip I ever took that was purely about the journey.  I didn't go there with the intent to visit anyone, or to sightsee with a fellow traveler.  I went by myself and hardly spoke for the two days I was there.  It was the first time I wanted nothing more than silence and space to grieve the end of the relationship.  I was exhausted emotionally and spiritually, and when I arrived in Edinburgh, I felt like I was home.  The whole city was a welcomed relief - it felt like a giant stuffed armchair next to a roaring fireplace in a cozy cottage on a winter's day.  It was everything I needed it to be.

I'm at a very different place in my life now, and I don't know if I need it to be anything more than what it actually is now.  I want to visit Stonehaven.  I'd like to walk along the waterfront and listen to the waves.  I'd like to visit their local heritage society and learn more about the seat of my family's lineage.  More than all of that, though, I would love to feel 'home' again.  The town where I grew up doesn't feel that way anymore, and I wonder if Scotland still will?  Or was it just the balm I needed to soothe an aching heart?

As I rack up the miles on this weight-loss journey, I find myself daydreaming of literally having Scotland as my end destination.  Perhaps divine intervention will strike and I will be gifted with a brilliant story to write, and I will become the next J. K. Rowling.  Until then, however, I will stick to my treadmill, renting videos from my local library about traveling in the UK to entertain me while I walk.  Unless someone out there reading this knows of a company in Scotland just dying to hire an American for a couple of years?

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