This year has proven to be full of many changes, few I could have anticipated even a year ago at this time. So I track the crows in the oaks, read the light against the clouds, and make a point to drum in each new season around its appointed arrival. Perhaps the equinox or the solstice will whisper what lies ahead.
I listen.
I learned how to do that 13 years ago, though I didn’t know that’s what I was doing. Something very quiet and subtle troubled me for a long time, and I chalked it up to my job. It made for an easy scapegoat — I expected my job to fulfill my life’s purpose and it wasn’t doing that — and meant I didn’t have to look inward too far.
Traveling Savage was born from this brewing storm of discontent. The first couple of years of traveling under this banner mostly involved getting my feet under me and learning the ropes of blogging, networking, and trip planning. I think it was around year four that I began to sense something again, something furtively sending out creepers in the fallen foliage of my subconscious.
Yes, I was traveling around Scotland to explore, document, and relate every nook and cranny of that magnificent country, but I was also searching for an answer to a question I couldn’t articulate. So many times the landscape spoke to me. At Glen Clova, at the Ring of Brodgar, at Old Castle Lachlan Scotland veritably shouted at me. But to the ear?
Only wind.
Some believe our physical senses have counterparts in a subtle realm overlaying the one in which we move and exist, the one modernity considers absolute. It has been given many names, derided, minimized, and made mythic, but it exists if my Picture This posts have any say in the matter. Some also believe the appreciation of beauty to be our sixth sense, the sense that, perhaps, serves as the bridge between the physical and the psychic.
Beauty was the language I learned.
Countless times Scotland froze me, mid-step, with a vista of such shuddering beauty it was all I could manage to snap a poor photo. My eight years traveling around Scotland, mostly solo, mostly isolated back home, came to represent a kind of hermitage. I realized that some would look on the same landscape I considered stunningly beautiful and find it merely pleasant, or worse. Beauty is subjective and Scotland’s landscape a kind of immense mirror of one’s self.
These experiences and views germinated the seeds that called out for sustenance within me, but still I struggled onward frustrated and self-blind. The ground was shifting beneath me, cracking and heaving, as each revolution of the sun led closer to a rising truth.
This is a story to be continued later, perhaps in my autumn update. As you can see, I’m moving State of the Savage from bi-monthly to quarterly! This only makes sense as I’m traveling a bit less often and have reduced my posting schedule to biweekly. I hope you don’t mind.
I still have many more things to write from trips I’ve taken over the past year and even older, including posts on Culloden Battlefield, several distilleries like Glen Grant and BenRiach, and loads of little-known special places throughout Aberdeenshire, so there won’t be a shortage of updates any time in the future.
It’s hard to express the gratitude I feel for the opportunity I’ve had to travel so deeply in a place I love so deeply and share that with all of you. Rambling through the highlands, islands, and lowlands, remember to look inward as you look outward.
Until next time,
Sláinte!
Keith –
I have followed your work for years and have thoroughly appreciated your wisdom, observations, and photos. This blog is no exception. I, too, have the same experience of Scotland. It IS a stunningly beautiful land. There is something about Scotland that is mythic – perhaps it’s the 400 million years the mountains have watched over the lochs, or the faeries in the next glen over. Whatever it is, it calls to my soul and it’s been a privilege to read the work of someone who loves Scotland as much as I do. I’ve referred people to your blogs and travel service so they too may get a sense of the true heart of the land. I look forward to reading more of your thoughts about the bridge between the physical and the psychic. I wish you the best and may the road always rise up to meet you and may the wind be always at your back.
Thank you for this beautiful note, Maggie. Is it any wonder Scotland’s esoteric history is so rich and voluminous? Humans have a habit of shrinking the scope of existence until it fits within established systems. It makes us feel like we’re in control. We are slave to that pursuit because we fear being vulnerability, but true freedom comes when we give up the desire to and delusions of control. I find, unexpectedly, I have more to say, but I’ll file it away for a blog post someday, perhaps. Thanks for reading.
Keith, like Maggie, I have also appreciated your perspective on a land that has captured my heart. You contributed greatly to a journey that began with one trip that became a yearly adventure of discovery. The discovery of places unknown to us is a natural opening to discovering more of ourselves, more of how large and yet how small our world is. My time in Scotland has distilled what I love, what feeds my soul in my life. I have a ways to go, certainly, but I am far richer for my time spent among the people and the land of Scotland. Your blend of enjoying the discovery of travel in Scotland with your own personal journey has surely encouraged many to look deeper into the places they go and to do so with a more open heart and mind. Thank you for helping make our world and our journey through it better.
Dear Kim, your comment is beautiful and so are the insight and wisdom you possess. It is all worth it — whatever all is to each person — if even one other person finds resonance in a work. Thank you for sharing this with me and other readers.