Take a Virtual Vacation: Scotland

For the past few days, my mother has been calling me with a slight alarm in her voice. “Laurie, I was looking at my calendar and I see that you’re going to Scotland on August 7th and then I looked and you don’t come back until the 25th. Is that true?” “Yes, Mom, I’m going […]

It’s the morning of my departure. Saying goodbye to Mom is the last thing on my list. I drive over to Sunshine Villa and let myself in her room. She’s sitting, as she usually is, on the flowered couch, newspapers scattered on the table before her. I clear off a space and sit beside her.

Today, I decided to catalogue the world’s greatest salads. I hadn’t intended to do that, but after the salad I had today in the London Heathrow airport, I felt compelled to start a list. Today’s salad, at a large sprawling restaurant called Giraffe, was called the Super Healthy Veggie and Oregano Feta Salad. It included

So far, 24 hours into my visit, Edinburgh feels like a teeming young person’s city. I don’t know if all the young people we see on the street are locals out for the evening or tourists from all over the world who have arrived for the theater festival. Last night we struck out around nine

We had a bit of a strange night last night. We had tickets to see A Winter’s Tale at the Fringe Festival. We’d scoped out the venue, gotten our tickets and showed up ten minutes before show time. The theatre, like all of Edinburgh this month, was crammed with advertisements for theatre: It was a

During our last full day in Edinburgh, Eileene and I headed out on foot to the cemetery we’d spotted the day before, passing, on the way, all kinds of now familiar landmarks of “our” neighborhood. I love how in less than two days, we’d claimed the mile around our place as “ours.” We delighted in

This writing retreat in Scotland came about when my former student, Robyn Randolph, emailed me from her new home in the Scottish Highlands and said, “Laura, if you ever want to teach a writing retreat here in Scotland, I’ll handle all the logistics on the ground.” That one email turned into a series of emails

Our last night in Edinburgh, Eileene and I had met up at the Urban Angel Café with Talin Vartanian, a journalist from Toronto, who would eventually be joining us at the retreat. Over the course of a lovely meal full of great conversation, she regaled us with baggage horror stories about Ryanair, one of the small

Some things need to be seen and experienced to be truly felt, and Newbold House is one of them. I’d been looking at pictures of Newbold House for months, but seeing it two-dimensionally in pixels didn’t compare to the visceral experience of walking inside the big front doors and feeling the grounded power of the

On my last free afternoon before the retreat was due to begin, Eileene and I decided to hike out to the local distillery for a tour. Christopher from Newbold House gave me a long set of walking instructions that included passing over a dam without water, keeping a stream that we hardly ever saw on

Our writing retreat officially began last night with a surprise—a traditional Scottish welcome. We all passed under these swords, were given a handshake and an ancient Celtic greeting, had some delicious snacks, and if we wanted it, a bit of whiskey. After a wonderful salmon dinner, we had an opening ceremony, Findhorn-style, led by Newbold

The Findhorn Foundation describes itself as, “a spiritual community, ecovillage and international center for holistic education,” Their mission is to “help unfold a new human consciousness and create a positive and sustainable future.” Elly, who led our opening ceremony, took us on our tour of Findhorn last night. It was a pleasant evening with a

This morning in writing group, I gave some instruction in close observation and then sent everyone out into the garden in silence. I asked them to choose one square foot of nature, something they found beautiful (a flower, a kale plant, a turned bed in the garden), and to sit in front of it, observing

(Note to readers: This post has a LOT of pictures. Let it load for a while and then come back to read it.) Since I knew we were scheduled to go on an outing today—to the Nairn Highland Games—I gave this homework at the end of writing class this morning: “Find out something specific about

Every morning at 7:35 AM, there is meditation up in the sanctuary at Newbold House. It’s for the residents of the house, but as guests, we are all invited. After the meditation is a half hour of Taize singing—devotional singing from around the world, sung in four-part harmony. I showed up for meditation and singing