Let the Shadows Fall

California. We were living the dream. Sunset walks on the beach, lazy weekends by the grill, chatting with neighbours, sunshine on tap. My husband, children and I had left our extended family behind in England and flown off to live in the USA. And then disaster struck. The details don’t matter, but my reaction to it does. For the first time in my life, I was dealing with stress that was just too much for me. Emotions that were too raw to face. A crisis that threatened to unravel me completely.

In the midst of it all, I had a trip planned to Scotland. That wasn’t unusual. My books are set in Scotland, it’s a country I love and know well, and whilst living in the US I was doing a fairly regular international commute for events and book tours. On that one occasion, however, it felt like the last thing I needed.

I set off from Los Angeles heavy-hearted, feeling sick to my stomach. The flight seemed to last forever, transferring at Heathrow and finally landing in Edinburgh. I went straight to a hotel, and took to bed. Twelve hours of sleep and one hot shower later, I dragged my sorry self to the car hire company and picked up my ride for the next week, so jet-lagged that I stuck a post-it note on the dashboard proclaiming in large red letters, “DRIVE ON LEFT!”. Then I got on the road and headed north.

My purpose was to hit a few book shops, sign some books, catch up with a few people I knew along the way, but mostly to check out locations for my next two books. I’d packed badly for the transition between the burning heat of Southern California and the less tropical climes of Scotland – by which I mean I’d neglected to even pack a coat, and my warmest item was an old hoodie. And so I began to drive, heating blasting, the sat nav doing an unimpressive job, wearing my sadness like the scarf I should actually have packed.

I stopped first in Kinross, where I bought takeaway coffee and a bacon roll, then found a car park overlooking Loch Leven. I cried there for an hour, watching shades of grey dance on the water’s glassy surface, listening to the silence. Other cars came and went. Dog walkers passed me and raised a greeting hand. A bird, hoping for scraps, watched me from a post. We shared the bacon roll, little by little, as I sat on the bonnet of the car and let the wind dry the tears from my face. I breathed Scotland’s air. I looked across the water to the island where the ruins of Lochleven Castle sat, and I tried to recall the tidbits I knew of its history. I was fairly certain that Robert the Bruce had visited there once. More sure that Mary Queen of Scots had stayed there as a guest, later imprisoned there and forced to abdicate.

I lost time, fingers curled around my slowly cooling coffee, imagining the comings and goings across Loch Leven. The endless sun-up-sun-down of that churning, bloody history. By the time my imagination was exhausted, even the bird had given up waiting for more food. I began driving again, this time heading for Braemar.

The sun shone a little that afternoon as I went. Not enough to heat the air, but sufficient to put shadows at the sides of trees and at the edge of the growing hills. It wasn’t the Californian sun and I was grateful for that. It didn’t suck the oxygen from your lungs, and threaten burns from too long an exposure. It was a herd of deer that stopped me in my tracks, made me pull over to watch them run, leap, eat, run, leap, eat, along the foothills of the glorious Cairngorms. I stood at the side of the road, not another car in sight, and I basked in it. The Cairngorm region has a light I’ve found nowhere else on earth. Always tinted slightly blue, come winter or summer. It’s a clean light, a true light. In that moment I was reminded of a Walt Whitman quote:

“Keep your face turned always towards the sun, and the shadows will fall behind you.”

Metaphor or not, I did just that. I turned into the sunshine, closed my eyes, and I let myself be thankful for those seconds. For the vastness of the place I was in. For the nature surrounding me. And I drove once more.

In Braemer that night, I didn’t hide in my room. I found a pub serving food, I sat at the bar, and I talked to the woman serving the drinks. We talked about nothing much as only the Scots can. We laughed for no particular reason which is what the Scots are good at. And when I was done, the woman who’d kept me company put her hand on mine, looked me in the eyes, and said, ‘You’re all right, sweetheart. Everything’s going to be all right.’

I don’t think I told her that I was troubled. I certainly didn’t impart any of the details of the crisis we were in at home. She just knew, and was able to reach out with flesh and bone and touch my hand, and it didn’t solve anything or change anything, but it was everything to me.

I didn’t cry again for the rest of that journey. I wasn’t happy, I don’t think, but the weight was gone. As I drove, and visited, and took in the scenery that can only be Scotland, something changed.

It wasn’t until I was back on a plane, looking down as we took off, that I realised how Scotland had healed me. It’s all about scale. The sense of being one tiny part of a much bigger thing. When you stand by a loch, or on a mountain side, or in the highlands, or on a beach in Scotland, there is peace. There is peace because nature has been preserved there, protected, loved. Nature is at the top of the agenda. Which means you, as a visitor, can find your proper place within it.

But the scale of Scotland is about history too. It’s about realising that the world will keep turning. You can fight your battles, win or lose. You can choose sides and go screaming into the fight. But a next day will come, and the night after that. And all the things you fought for or railed against will change once more.

Scotland had always been, I now understand, my temple. That visit simply gave me pause to think about why. It’s where I go to plug myself in, to recharge in all the ways that matter. Scotland is my therapy. My food and drink.

I returned home able to face the world, and better able to help others heal. All it took was to stop and breathe a while, and to remember how temporary everything is.