Coming to my Beloved Country

The train trip from London to Inverness was comfortable but we got little sleep. It was a milk-train that stopped at every station along the way, waking us up at every stop. (Yawn). Our friends Wilf and Wendy picked us up at the Inverness station and drove us across the rather desolate Dirrie Mor and down through the lovely glen leading to Ullapool. You come down through trees and masses of blooming rhododendrons to the sea, where the white houses and shops of the town line the quey and trawlers ride at anchor along the shore. It is a beautiful sight.

Then over the mountains on a one-lane winding road to Coigach and the tiny village of Polbain (about 30 full-time residents). We stayed with Wilf and Wendy in their sea-side Seaview Cottage. Here we were introduced to their 6 pet sheep, and fed over the course of our stay on lamb, haggis, fish, and home-made wine.

Polbain's white-washed houses are strung out mostly along the upper (northern) side of a single-track road that circles the Coigach peninsula, on the far northwest coast of Scotland. The country is wild and open - mostly heather and gorse with very few trees except around the houses and gardens. On the south side of the road croft fields sweep down to the sea where the Summer Isles lie just off shore. Across the sea loch are the snow-capped Dundonnel mountains, and to the west across the sea you can make out the blue outline of the outer Hebrides.
The mountains behind the village are like the mountains of the moon - each standing seperately with it's own particular shape and personality. Stac Polly crouches like a lion, its top a spiky, rocky mane. Suillven is a sugar loaf. The Coigach mountains offer some of the best hill walking in Britain. This is not the soft green beauty of the Borders country or the pastural beauty of the Black Isle on the east coast of Scotland. It is wild, Heathcliff-on-the- moor-type beauty that fills my heart with joy.

On the road again

So - Nancy and I flew to London and spent 2 days kicking around looking at the usual sights. There are some special things I've discovered over the years - one is evensong at St. Paul's every day at sunset. The boy's choir is wonderful - and if you sit in the front row in front of the altar, just before the service the deacon will come down and ask if you'd like to sit up in the choir stalls. It's a delightful experience.

One can take a boat from Westminster pier to the Tower of London or to Grenich and it's much more fun than the bus or underground. It was fun to come into the Tower by the water-gate - shades of QE1.

We went to Selfridges and they happened to have a large number of the life-size terra-cotta Chinese army tomb figures - both mounted and foot soldiers. They were amazing. After spending time in the British Museum we took an over-night sleeper to Inverness.

Another diversion

"Diversion" is what they use in the UK instead of "detour". When driving in Scotland, we often sat in our car waiting in a line for a flagman to signal us through, wondering what the diversion would be - dancing girls would be nice.

Anyway. When we were younger Jack and I did a lot of backpacking and wilderness canoeing - loving the wild places, campfires and solitude. As we got older it got too hard to sleep on the ground and deal with wet gear etc. so we were sadly watching our camping days recede into the past. Then we found the egg. A little fiberglass camper made by U-Haul in the 1980's and only 13 feet long including hitch. We could tow it behind our van - didn't need a SUV or truck. And it has everything but a bathroom - heater, stove, closet, storage, dining table and a wonderfully cozy, comfy bed. It's airy - but eliminates wet gear and is always ready to go. We can park it in tent sites (it has a solar panel so we always have electricity).



That's what we take to the Black Hills.

Detour

Again I digress - we've spent the last week camping in the Black Hills at our favorite US Forest campground at Bismark Lake. We visited all our favorite sites - but our favorite thing is to drive the Wildlife Loop in the late evening. This year was the very best for meeting the natives!



Spring must be the time for turkeys - it's the only time we've met them in the Black Hills. They were all over the place. Love in mind I think!



Mother love was also in evidence - hundreds of buffalo dotted the hills as they must have done in the distant past. The new calves romped and fed (at one point in the middle of the road stopping traffic for quite a while).



Antelope - very at home on the range - played everywhere. But this one just wanted to eat the pretty blue flowers. We saw a road sign once that said "Caution - antelope entering roadway at 55 mph." And they sure can move when they want to!













"Danger! Stranger!"
Sentinals raised the alarm while the babies rolled and wrestled and generally had a great time.









"I've always wanted a screened-in porch!"







What?









"Got Lunch?"










Ex-natives - mammoths, camels, lions & bears, Oh my!











"It gets mighty dry out here on the prairie!"

What next?

I haven't written anything here for a while - been preparing for and giving a very successful author's event at Garrison Kiellor's book store and two very fun and successful days at the Shepherd's Harvest in Lake Elmo. That is a great event for anyone interested in the fiber arts and the animals (sheep, lamas, rabbits etc.) that provide fiber for the beautiful yarns and crafts on display. My daughter went nuts and bought a carder - which allowed her to produce the yarn that brought the best price in the charity spinning event.

But back to our story. So I'm spending sleepless nights wondering what to do next. By summer we will be homeless - so we thought we'd better get someplace to lay our heads come fall. We wrote to our friends Wilf and Wendy in Coigach and they said they could think of a few places that might have a house available for a long let. Oh goody.

Jack had a film script he was working on and couldn't get away, so I found a friend who could go to Scotland with me to look for a house. We would fly to London, then take the train to York and on to Inverness. Wilf and Wendy would pick us up in Inverness and drive us over the mountains to Polbain (our small village in Coigach). Nancy had never been to Europe and was enthusiastic about our trip! I was both excited and apprehensive. Would any of the available houses make a good home for us?

Breaking the news

We contacted a friend of ours who was now a real estate agent and told him to put the house on the market on April 1st. In the meantime we had to break the news to my employers (also dear friends) and our respective families. Jack's mother was delighted. "It's about time," she said. She'd had dreams like that herself. Had she disapproved, we wouldn't have changed our minds but we would have worried a lot more about the wisdom of what we were doing.

My parents looked at us as if we were crazy. They knew we'd done mad things in the past, but this was beyond the pale. They were products of the depression years and safety and security were important above all - and spending the equity in our house seemed like the ultimate folly. Our girls had some trepidation about being out there on their own, but they did their best to hide it and never were anything but supportive. In the end our whole family menage came through and did everything they could to help us make our dream a reality. I bless them all.

Our friends were excited, some envious, some completely flumoxed - what can we be thinking of? We knew we'd be missing each other - but at least it wasn't going to be a permanent move. We'd be back - and then - who could tell?