After a Week in Scotland

Beauty! Sun! Art! Existential Burrs!

You absolutely did not ask for this and may not be at all interested, but I’ve been nursing a terrible head cold which incubated nicely while we were flying home from Scotland and took its first steps on the drive home from the airport, and so my brain is not much good for much else.

Ten not so deep or profound thoughts about our trip to Scotland, in no order except the order they came to me.

1. If you follow me on Instagram where I shared a somewhat daily roundup of photos from each day, you know that Scotland was seeing a spate of clear, sunny, and un[[r]s]easonably warm days while we were there. From the moment we landed until the moment we left, there was not one drop of rain, wall of fog, or gust of wind to be had. We had one misty morning boat ride, but by midway through, the sun was there too and we both came back sun-crisped, though, thankfully, not seasick. I swear to you, ever single conversation we had with a local was rife with their elation at the weather. I have spent enough time in cold, rainy, gray days that I don’t begrudge anyone their sunshine, but if I wanted a sunny vacation I’d have gone to the beach. Give me the drama! Give me the wind! Where is the driving rain I planned for? Where is the mist I envisioned? While normally I’m hunting for sunlight on gray days, by the end of our seven days there, I was shrinking into the shadows wherever I could find them and still getting a sunburn. I was grouchy about it, no question.

   

   View toward Raasay Island

2. Our favorite place on the planet is Santa Fe in the off-season and so when we were trying to figure out where we would go for our ten-year anniversary, I asked people to share their recommendations for a place like Santa Fe, by which I meant, art galleries and museums, walkable, good food, a felt sense of the spiritual, and beautiful scenery. So many people recommended Isle of Skye that I thought, well, they must be right! Without thinking much more about it, we booked our tickets and then set about planning the trip. We are not typically touristy people and since the high season was said to be June-September, I thought we’d be safe in May. I was wrong. Skye was packed. It could have been the weather or maybe just the popularity of Skye has grown since those who recommended it to us had gone, but the roads were crammed, the parking lots were full, the trails were heavily trafficked, and by day two, we gave up and charted our own course around Skye, visiting tiny croft artist studios and off-the-beaten-path places. (A full disclaimer here is necessary: we are fully aware that we were a part of the problem.) It did not feel like a deeply spiritual place to us, mostly because we spent so much time driving and navigating crowds. Apart from Portree, it was not very walkable, which fortunately we’d prepared for during planning. The scenery was gorgeous and surprisingly did remind us very much of New Mexico or parts of the hill country of Texas, scrubby, treeless, brown, and the mountains were beautiful, but also imposing. We remarked many times to one another that to live there, one would need to be an incredibly hardy person. Many of the locals we spoke to (after we quit the tourist traps) lamented the tourism, the traffic, the wear, tear, and erosion on beautiful sites, the rising prices for locals, though I imagine it’s all a double-edged sword. I left with a fresh awareness of our own footprints in beautiful places, of how easy it is to treat a place like a commodity, to do it for the ‘gram or the plot or whatever. One local artist we spoke with for a long time said, “In the old days, people use to come to Skye and just stay in one place for a week or more, now everyone who comes has to do all the things Trip Advisor tells them to do, moving all over the island.” Another traveler we met was excited to tell us all they did was book their tickets and then ChatGPT planned their whole itinerary. Both comments made me sad. It made me sad for Isle of Skye but also sad for us, for all of us. It was an existential sadness and it, unfortunately, stuck to me like a burr for the entirety of our trip. It also made me aware that as I have some more European travel planned for this fall, I will plan to do some things a little differently.

3. The best, best part of our trek was our AirBnb (which, honestly, is a whole other existential crisis for my brain but I tried to not think about it too much while there 😂). We somehow, I have no idea how, were able to book a place that met every need and unspoken desire. It was simple, quiet, lush with green, a two minute walk from a bay, and beautiful. I pinched myself as we drove through the quiet landscape to it. We both slept so well, which is a rarity for us on vacation

   

   View from The Crofter’s House on our one cloudy evening.

4. On our final day there, we met up with two of our dearest friends, one of whom is working on her PhD at Saint Andrews University. Our time together was too short and so special. I could have spent hours more with them, which made me think about how we vacation to get away from regular life, but the things that are really special are just having a regular life with regular friends. It made me want to really begin working on community here in our new city (We’ve generally taken the perennial advice when we’ve moved—the first year to sleep, the second year to creep, the third year to leap—and applied it to relationships, routines, etc.). We’re still in our first year here but there are such good people around us, we want to make sure to be prioritizing them.

5. This is perhaps related to point 2, but this trip really made me remember that staying in tourist hot spots or going to them is actually not very enjoyable for either of us. We stayed in Old Town Edinburgh and it was just packed, not our vibe. Every time we really enjoyed something about the trip it was always in or because of a conversation with a local we met, every single time. It just made me realize what makes a place really special is not the inanimate objects or spaces, but the people who inhabit it.

6. The one touristy thing we did that we both agreed surprised us was a hop-on-hop-off tour in Edinburgh on our first day there, terribly jet-lagged and struggling with decision making. I am a very spacially aware person. I couldn’t get lost if I tried. I usually know which direction I’m facing at all time just intuitively. So I had a pretty good idea of the space around us in Edinburgh, but taking the trip around the city on the bus in one full go around helped ground me and locate me in the place in a way that felt indispensable to us both. It surprised me because I mostly think of those buses as kitschy, but that’s just my own pride. It was worth the ~$30 and I plan to do one in every new city I visit overseas.

7. The best travel purchase I made was a travel backpack I saw recommended for traveling light. We both only had one carry-on suitcase and a backpack, so no checked luggage. I don’t like sending you to Amazon but that’s where I got mine and it is a magic backpack and I highly recommend it. This thing fit so much stuff and had so many great compartments and was comfortable to wear trekking through cobblestone streets, up and down flights of stairs, in addition to having a strap that fits it over your luggage handle. It fits perfectly under the seat on the airplane. 10/10

   

   The magic backpacked, unpacked.

8. The best (only) take-home purchase we made while there was art by several local artists. We always try to buy some art to frame when we travel and we found some really special pieces this time. We try to buy unframed if we’re flying, which obviously we were, and we have an Away suitcase with a hardshell so packing it safely is no problem

   

   Art from Hannah Farthing

9. The best all around meal we had was perhaps not the Michelin starred Kinloch Lodge (though it was very good!) but actually a breakfast of Turkish eggs at a tiny cafe on the Trottenish Peninsula. Nate says that the salmon small plate he had at Kinloch was the best tasting thing he ate and the best tasting thing I ate was some seared scallops in butternut puree at a local cafe. But still the cafe breakfast was the easy favorite meal we had our whole time there. I will say this about Skye, the food there was superb. Everything we ate was delicious, the flavors just gorgeous.

   

   Cardamom bun from Lean-To Coffee

10. Finally, it was so, so nice to just be with Nate for seven days. Ten years together is, as I said before we left, a middle-school marriage. It’s beyond the honeymoon and not yet golden. Without children, we’ve had to navigate many of the things our friends with children won’t navigate for years, until their nests are empty. But also without children, we’ve had to find other ways to challenge ourselves and grow in the ways children can force a couple to grow. We had one rough day (car/driving/navigation related things is always our difficult spot), but we mended it before going to sleep and managed well the rest of the time. I love my husband and partner. I love his tenderness and kindness, his gentleness and patience with me. I love his flexibility and willingness to change a plan when needed or wanted. I was really hard on myself for some planning related things especially in the beginning of the trip, and am always prone to being too in my head, and he always meets my harsh words to myself with tender ones in return. He is kinder to me than I am to me. He is more generous with our finances than I am. He is a servant when I would rather sleep. He walked more steps than I did, tracking down caffeine when we needed it and pastries when we wanted them. Ten years with Nathan Wilbert is better than anything I could have imagined or asked for ten years ago.

My love and me, by castle ruins in the Cuillin Mountains

Thanks for making it this far! We will be back to regular stuff soon, I’m sure. I just need to beat this cold.

Also! There is still time to join our summer off social media experiment! You can join until the 25th of May.