Highland Dispatch

Notes from Scotland

Where to begin? Perhaps where it ended: a night with too much single malt scotch, shared by a crackling fire in a cottage in the Cairngorms. It was our last night in the Scottish Highlands, and we had made fast friends with the owner of our rental cottage, a retired dentist from Glasgow. He came over at dusk carrying a shopping bag full of bottles—a smooth Macallan, a smoky Lagavulin, a bright, fruity Arran, a briny Talisker, and some others lost to inebriation. We talked about travel, and politics, and food, and mountain climbing well into the night, our tongues loosened by the whisky. Our plans to leave bright and early the next day were scrubbed in favor of an extra hour of sleep. Still, when the sun came up and coffee consumed, it was, as the Scots say, “a foggy morning in the glen.”

Travel, it is said, broadens the mind. Getting out of one’s comfort zone, trying new foods, making a fool of yourself attempting another language, and seeing how other cultures live can make one more understanding and compassionate, less rigid. I’ve had experience with this, traveling in Central America, in Asia, even in some parts of the United States. Traveling to Scotland did none of that for me. It was, conversely, a trip that cemented in my mind exactly what I love and, in many ways, who I am. And that can be equally valuable sometimes. I mean, driving through a picturesque country in an old Land Rover, from trailhead to pub to cottage to distillery, sitting by wood fires, pulling on hiking boots and woolly jumpers (sweaters to Americans) is not exactly stretching my limits.