Thick beams of spring sun saturate the lawn around crumbling Dunkeld Cathedral. Moss inches up the trunks of towering oaks, and a herd of precious yellow-capped flowers climb up the moss. I lay belly down upon the earth and bring in the scene through my camera while dark age warriors and monks mirror me beneath the ground. The aroma of the fecund turf and the whispering of the River Tay as it sidles past hold me immobile. The warmth of the sun is a hug from the unblemished March sky. Down river, a man in hip waders outlines the flicking of his wrist with a filament of fly-fishing line. The fly careens onto the river’s surface where the movements of fish leave geometric whorls. There is space between the sounds and smells and sensations that elevates them all from footnotes to constellations. Read more...
Eight figures guard the corners of Glasgow’s Kelvin Way Bridge. I pass by Navigation and Shipbuilding, and look across the street to Commerce and Industry and Philosophy and Inspiration, before gazing up at Peace and War. The young autumn’s sunlight clangs off the weathered bronze of a woman with spinning wheel and sleeping babe. The arresting image of a bandaged man, mouth agape, staring into the distance figures to be War. His arms were blown off into the river below when a German bomb fell here in 1941. For years the haunting statue peered armless into the Glaswegian mists.
It took only 15 years for these trophies of WWI to be hammered in WWII. What will remain of them, of Glasgow, in 1,000 years? Read more...
The Bon Accord peers over the M8 motorway through a spartan row of trees in that colorblind space between Glasgow’s red-stone downtown and green West End. Behind the shining Bon Accord sign and planters overflowing with flowers, Paul McDonagh curates a collection of single malt Scotch whisky. The bottles glitter like a chest full of gold pieces kissed by torch light. The back bar is a trophy case of elixirs handpicked from the reaches of Scotland, from the wind-blasted Orkney Isles to rain-soaked Islay to sunny, lush Speyside and all the moorland in between. There are tarry potions and amber syrups, clear bottles of liquid sunlight and stumpy green flasks of dreaming tinctures.
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A cerulean knife of water separates Iona and Mull, two islands holy in their own ways. A hard rain and a chill wind cavort beneath a monotonous gray sky as I exit the ferry and step on to the white powder beach of Iona. Handfuls of visitors straggle through the one-lane town toward Iona Abbey. Many of them stop, look toward it, and smile as the rain patters against their glasses. I turn back to the Sound of Iona, wild Mull in the distance, and gaze into the glassy waters.
Dolphins arc above the waves, their steely bodies break the air in musical arpeggios. They race alongside the small ferry that tirelessly tracks to Iona and Fionnphort and back. Some of the children on board point at the animals, but their parents are too busy peering through the misty air at the abbey. Read more...
The wooden door to the chapel slams shut behind me: A silent dimness opens up as the tempest battering Iona is closed off. Hard, simple chairs march toward a divine arched window all aglow, worn hymnals resting in the seat backs. Great pavers, damp from the Scottish autumn, jigsaw together on the floor. A cash register dings and chimes in a gift shop somewhere. Fifteen centuries ago, a building stood here that was Columba’s golem of faith. He launched sortie after sortie upon the native Picts and Scots from this scrap of land, determined to pave over their beliefs with his own: Christianity.
Into ruin and rebuilt, again and again, Iona Abbey was reborn and resurrected over the centuries. Each time an element of the original structure was ignored or forgotten until now, when what we’re left with is little more than 80 years old. Would Columba recognize today’s abbey? So I wonder about many things of antiquity that have lasted into our modern times. Read more...
A hunter, oft-stubbled and bleary-eyed, driven by an insatiable hunger for exploration and experience - and perhaps a chance to thin the herd of caffeinated and alcoholic beverages. From the highlands and islands to Edinburgh, Glasgow, and the Borders, I explore Scotland with a pen in hand and a fire in the belly (which could be partly from the whisky). 
