the Highlands
Up to this point I haven’t been especially poetic in the few blogs I’ve written – it’s been more a “this is the place, these are the photographs” kind of recount. This is mostly because I’ve had nothing lyrical to say, until now. Scotland was one of the places I had always dreamed of seeing. It began with my interest in (read, mild obsession with) the Diana Gabaldon Outlander series that follows the story of two people on a fantastical journey through Scotland and into the United States. Much of what I know of Scotland and its history comes from these near 6000 pages of story mixed with genuine historically accurate events. I have no head for historical facts, for dates and times and places and names, and yet I am able to understand and connect with the stories and truths of Scotland during the time of the final rising in 1745 and Bonnie Prince Charlie and his lot. I imagine I have a much better recollection of facts when I am not forced to remember them but rather do so for interest and pure pleasure. If only all of history could be like that! But I digress.
I had in my mind this image of the highlands of Scotland that was drawn by Diana and her accounts, but in the end it turns out no words can really and truly express the beauty - the amazing breathtaking awe inspiring I cannot believe places like this really exist kind of beauty - that I found . If, nay, not if but when, I come back it will be to the Highlands – to the places where sea and sky join in mighty peaks of mountains of rock and peat, of stunning impossible green, of castles crumbling yet still standing, testaments to a torrid past. I will come back to this place where these same mountains, shadowed beneath stormy skies that break for the sun, sink low into the valleys and lochs that reflect their majesty, where thousands of rugged sheep dot the landscape, where the mist and clouds roll in and out in dramatic and windy gusts that create light and shadows in the most amazing ways. I will come back to this place where the people, with their contradiction of musical and rough speech, sing songs of battles and loves lost and won. The brief, too brief, days spent in the Highlands were the most impressive I’ve had in my lifetime. Every mile from Edinburgh to Inverness is worth driving again, twice over. And with so much more to explore, how can I resist? I will come back to this magical place…it’s not a matter of if, but simply, when.
I had in my mind this image of the highlands of Scotland that was drawn by Diana and her accounts, but in the end it turns out no words can really and truly express the beauty - the amazing breathtaking awe inspiring I cannot believe places like this really exist kind of beauty - that I found . If, nay, not if but when, I come back it will be to the Highlands – to the places where sea and sky join in mighty peaks of mountains of rock and peat, of stunning impossible green, of castles crumbling yet still standing, testaments to a torrid past. I will come back to this place where these same mountains, shadowed beneath stormy skies that break for the sun, sink low into the valleys and lochs that reflect their majesty, where thousands of rugged sheep dot the landscape, where the mist and clouds roll in and out in dramatic and windy gusts that create light and shadows in the most amazing ways. I will come back to this place where the people, with their contradiction of musical and rough speech, sing songs of battles and loves lost and won. The brief, too brief, days spent in the Highlands were the most impressive I’ve had in my lifetime. Every mile from Edinburgh to Inverness is worth driving again, twice over. And with so much more to explore, how can I resist? I will come back to this magical place…it’s not a matter of if, but simply, when.
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