The Highlands: Part 1

I have so many things I could say about last week's trip to the Scottish Highlands. It was such a good trip, good in the sense of the word that bounces forward from the back of your throat and uses your entire mouth on the way out from your lungs into the world, the kind of good that God called creation at the beginning, the kind of good that settles your soul down and says, "This is what you're meant to be." It's peaceful and vibrant at the same time, this kind of good. I've missed it.

I could talk about the people, but I think it's easier to say that I haven't laughed that hard or smiled so much or enjoyed myself so easily in a while. I smiled at a baby every day and played with toddlers and ate a proper dinner and did the dishes afterwards while we talked about anything. We told stories in the car and built up a small pile of inside jokes and sang along to music with the windows down. I've missed so much of that too.

I could tell you about going to see the Harry Potter train or about staying with the family of a friend of our's on a croft farm or riding along on the single-track roads or the adorable coffee shop in Fort William we spent some hours in or the experience that was Skye or Iona. I might yet tell you about all those things still. Those might be stories best told in person with gestures and laughter and the occasional misremembered or repeated detail because that's rather how I want to carry most of this experience. I want to hold it in my heart as the good memory it is, rather than letting pen and paper or zeroes and ones remember it for me, and I want to feel the happiness as it bubbles out of my voice when I talk about it. Fingers on keys only dance the one song when you're telling a story. Out loud, you get to sway and jump and lean into the sounds again and again.

I don't want to be long here because there's another idea that's needling in my back of my mind. I'll talk about it on Friday, I think. But hey, we took a boatload of fun pictures this trip and I'd rather tell you about them than dig too deep right now. So for those of you who haven't stalked them all on facebook or were wondering where we were at when we saw that highland cow, this post is for you!

We were staying in Fort William and using that as a base for all our travels. About twenty minutes down the road is the Glenfinnan viaduct, over which the Jacobite Steam Train runs. You might recognize it as one of the locations that the Hogwarts Express travels through in the Harry Potter films.

 It's like being at Universal, BUT REAL.

We were staying on a croft farm just outside of Fort William and the big mountain near Fort William is Ben Nevis. This is not Ben Nevis in the background, but they are other mountains in the Grampian Mountain range.

The distillery in Fort William (which I think is called Ben Nevis Distillery) has some shetland ponies and highland cows in a pen just outside the parking lot. We stopped by to say hi. (There's a fake highland cow in a storefront on Princes Street that Melanie and I had taken a picture with and so we were trying to recreate that. The cow was more or less obliging.)

Heather took us to the ruins of Old Inverlochy Castle in Fort William and we decided to take a climb.

It was rainy and mystical.

AND SO HIGH. 

The day we drove up to Skye, we were getting ready for our day about the same time as the family we were staying with and their two year old decided that she wanted her hair done in two little adorable hair buns. I did the same as a joke but then found that it was super comfortable, so I left it up. While we were waiting on one of the ferries to Skye, Melanie and Viola joined me in my hair adventures. It lasted like ten minutes.

And this is the waterfall I made Heather stop the van so I could go take pictures of it. I'm fairly certain it's actually on the Isle of Skye but I don't know it's name, so let me tell you instead that Skye is the most northerly major island in the Inner Hebrides, which is pronounced Heh-bruh-dees and not He-brides as you may have guessed.

THE HIGHLANDER CASTLE YOU GUYS. I HAVE IT IN MY HAND. (It's Eilean Donan castle.)

We're on one of the ferries to Iona in this picture but do I remember which one or know what we're looking at? Nope. But I figured no one would say no to some sun and water. The weather was so nice, y'all. I got a sunburn. It was magical.

This is from the shore on Iona (which is, like, three miles big, so it's basically all shore) but it's here because (1) it looks like a picture you'd take for a calendar and I'm super proud of it and (2) THOSE ARE THE ACTUAL COLORS. That moss or algae was actually that green and that seaweed was actually that red. In this world of filters and digital image manipulation, I feel the need to share something that was genuinely surprisingly lovely with everyone. 

On Iona. Not pictured: ALL THE SHEEP. SO. MANY. SHEEP.

We found a boat called the TARDIS. It was the same size on the inside as out, but still.

We caught the sun setting over the Atlantic Ocean on Iona. It's not quite down yet (it didn't set until 9:30 or some such nonsense), but this was our vantage point from the highest point on the island before we went down to the shore to watch the end of it.

Even our drive back from Fort William was beautiful. Ugh, nature, why you gotta be like that and why you gotta be so far from me?