As the first frosts come to Wisconsin, I’m reminded that in five days it will have been one year since I left my corporate job. That’s a major milestone and cause for a reality check. But first, a celebration of all the traveling I’ve done in the last year!
I kicked off Traveling Savage by spending five weeks in Argentina in November and December of 2010. It was my first time traveling solo, my first trip to South America, and a million other firsts that resulted in greater cultural and self awareness. I split time between Buenos Aires and Salta all while sharing meriendas and asados with ex-pats and locals. Argentina was revelatory, difficult, exuberant, and transformative.
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And I’m back.
Home that is. And just in time, too, because tomorrow is my four-year wedding anniversary (yay us!).
As much as I love savagely traveling around Scotland, there’s something beautiful about stepping through my front door when I return home. I’ll be busy doing all the things I love about autumn in Wisconsin over the next couple months. You know, watching the Packers, picking apples, carving pumpkins, raking moldy leaves and pruning back plants in suddenly cold weather.
Well, nothing’s perfect. Read more...
Have you ever found yourself returning again and again to a place, perhaps reenacting a scene or activity? Do you wonder why, or have you extinguished that curious flame with a half-thought and flimsy reason? It’s fun. It’s pretty. It’s cheap. What does it say about you that you return there? Is it pathological or just unfinished business?
There is a place in this world, for everyone, that will command daily thoughts, tug at hidden bonds, and pull across the oceans and ages.
If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. It’s there.
Recently, I finally admitted to myself that Scotland is that place for me. Read more...
Isle of Arran, Scotland | May 3, 2006
Like travelers to a fire in the dark of winter, the village and towns of Arran huddle around the narrow coastal road encircling the island. We tracked north from the port in Brodick to the village of Lochranza where an old church, converted to a bed and breakfast, awaited. Above us, like sea frigates turned to airships, broad-bellied clouds plied the skies around the Goat Fell and its sister corbetts, their faces hidden in veils of mist and running with the sometimes audible sound of rivers. Centuries had passed since The Clearances had drained the small of isle of many of its people; hard voyages to Canada, conceived in deceit by the island’s earl, were damned from the first frigid waves that crashed over the Caledonia’s bow. Read more...
Scotland: It’s not all kilts, whisky, golf, and Mel Gibson in blue face paint (though I did have a surreal moment at the Flattie Bar in Stromness one autumn night as patrons sat captivated by a showing of Braveheart on the pub’s TV).
It’s forgivable if that’s the breadth of your Scotland knowledge; we have popular culture to thank for these shorthand maps, but they all too often overshadow the complexity and wonder of the real country.
After announcing Traveling Savage’s new focus on Scotland for 2011 and beyond, many readers expressed excitement because Scotland is a place they either know little about or haven’t considered for their own travels. It can be difficult for me to express why I love Scotland as much as I do, so I decided to take this as a challenge to describe why I’m going to Scotland and you should too. 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). 
