The Beauty of Reality

    

 

    

    Traveling, like life, is never what you expect.
    I just came back from a two-week trip to Scotland, a place I had wanted to visit for a long time. All the pictures in glossy photo books and calendars showed a place that was wild, almost unearthly, like nothing I had ever seen: intensely green hills with nothing to break the green except for a castle or the ruins of a church, often enshrouded in mists. It looked improbably romantic.
    And yet my first look at those hills, from Loch Lomond north of Glasgow, showed brown hills, not green, and even worse, hills that had been shorn of their trees. I could see the evidence in front of me: pockets of trees in the creases of the hills, places where logging operations couldn’t get to easily. In the next week, I saw even worse: clearcutting where the stumps and waste products were left on the hills, a barren wasteland devoid of any life. And this was on the island of Skye, in the inner Hebrides, a place described by travel writers as enchanting, with the highest peaks in Great Britain.
    One should never believe the images on postcards. I knew that, yet this went beyond mere distortion, emphasizing the beauty over the plain.  We were lucky enough to stay one night in a B&B that had its own small library, including one (the title of which I’ve forgotten) that seemed intent on debunking some of the myths about Scotland (many of those myths involve the bravery of the Scots against the English, but that’s another story).
    Scotland was once covered by a huge forest, the Caledonian forest. I had read that before, but I didn’t know that, once the forest had been razed for lumber, it was kept that way by the thousands of sheep brought to the island to be raised for their wool and food. In the process, not only were trees the victims, but thousands of people (known as crofters) were pushed off their land, so the gentry could use the land more profitably to raise sheep. 
     When we were there, it was lambing season on Skye, and there were sheep everywhere. I fell in love with the sheep, who have a sweetness about them. But sheep eat everything, even the shoots of new trees, and those long, unbroken expanses of green everywhere are not bits of wilderness but the direst result of sheep eating everything and everywhere. 
    And yet, once I accepted the fact that this wasn’t the place I imagined it to be, that there wouldn’t be men in kilts playing bagpipes on every corner, I started seeing Scotland for what it was: the amiable sheep, almost comical in their thick fur and skinny legs, with lambs running on the boulder-strewn slopes; green hillsides dissected by old stone walls and the occasional iconic whitewashed house; and the ocean penetrating deep into the land, fingers of water that went on for miles. I found harbor towns that were beautiful beyond anything I imagined, that spectacularly faced the sea and rows of almost hidden islands. Reality sucks, according to the bumpersticker, but it also opens your eyes and your heart.

Photos starting from top: northwest corner of Isle of Skye; Portree, Isle of Sky; cemetery near Broadford, Isle of Skye; sheep on Isle of Skye; and, below: on the road to Elgol, Isle of Skye; and Eilean Donan Castle on Loch Duich.

 

Comments

[Shoney]

Oh Kathy,
Your photos spark my idealized Scotland dreams which your blog re-frames....thank you for it all. Ahh, the sheep and their adorable lambs make me remember New Zealand. How do we balance their sweet, funny nature with the damage they do to the land? Oh, and then people too, especially, are often not as funny or sweet as the lambs, do the most damage of all. I really enjoyed this entry and shall send it along to my daughter in London.

[sally]

Kathy, I loved the photos!! I'm wondering if by chance you were there a little early for the green hills?? Maybe it takes a certain amount of warmth before the grass get green?? Just a thought. I was surprised to hear about the logging, I don't know why? I don't remember that when I was there or was it just on Skye? Maybe they started logging later on, after I was gone. But I have fond thoughts about Scotland and always wanted to return, the people at the time I was there were very funny, always telling tons of jokes....maybe it was just that we were young and into the party spirit. Glad you went and saw.

[Julene]

Kathy, Thanks for those well-turned words describing the place as you found it, complete with decimated forests and "sweet," "amiable" sheep. I loved your great prose descriptions and your gorgeous pictures.

[Shari Phiel]

I also spent two weeks (albeit very rainy) in Scotland back in 2006 and like you found my vision of the country, gleaned from books and Photoshopped calendars, wasn't to be found. But the real Scotland in many ways surpassed it by far. I met some of the kindest and warmest people I've ever run across while I was there, some of whom I still keep in contact with. Luckily, I did get to spend some time hiking in the forests around Loch Ness and Glenfinnan. For me, the real Scotland was found once I left the tourist meccas and spent more time wandering the roads less traveled. Your pictures are beautiful - it's like being there all over again!

[Jerrie Hurd]

Loved photos. Reminded me of my week in Scotland. Wonderful place. My favorite memory is walking the forests around Loch Ness. Thanks for sharing your views.

[R Carstens]

You've touched on an important topic here, Kathy. Looking for beauty in what we find, what is around us at the moment, even tho different than what we expected or dreamed of. I've been working on an article about Minnesota artist Joseph Paquet and he tells me he paints the ordinary around him because he wants to bring its plainer beauty to light. He does it well, even when he's just painting an old rusted-out industrial building in the middle of a cold, grey winter. It's wonderful that you were able to move past your disappointment at what was missing and look around freshly to enjoy what WAS there.

[Alyce Barry]

What wonderful photos, Kathy, wow. I've copied some of them to my Pictures folder and made this one of Eilean Donan Castle my desktop background -- stunning.