Starting where I left off

What a strange and wondrous thing it is to hit the road.

For me, this has always been true. I’ve traveled to and walked across(or through or around) too many countries to count at this point in my wandering life.

I yearn to walk around this world, then turn around and keep on walking; to walk across borders and fences and the strange lines that mark land ownership, as if land can ever be owned. I wish I could walk through the barriers erected across the globe to separate us from each other and which work to elevate the few at the cost of the many. I see myself as a resident of the planet, the universe, rather than a country or a single spot on the map of the world.

Still, I am eternally grateful for the last few years, when COVID put a kibosh on my frequent traveling. It invited me instead to walk the paths of my own city and state, and, in doing so, connect with the spirit that abides in this place.

Sometimes I think my constant wanderlust gets in the way of seeing what is right in front of me – that spirit or the place where my feet actually are at any given moment. Too often I forget that beauty is everywhere, including right outside my door. In the lush rainforests and royal mountains just a few miles away, in the rushing rivers and almost desert hills of this one state. Walking only in Seattle and within greater Washington since late 2019 has reconnected me with my birth place and, perhaps more importantly, reminded me of what it means to call a place home.

But I have been awfully eager to step back on to the road of the wider world. The word “itching” comes to mind. Pining. Waiting.

Mary and I hit the road. The dog stayed home.

And so, it was with great joy that I invited my best friend Mary to return with me to Scotland this month and take a long walk across the Highlands.

Unlike me, Mary has always been connected to place. She calls the Methow Valley her home. She is a grower of food, maker of cider, an environmental advocate, a woman who feels deeply the terrible inequities, violence and theft that have been perpetrated against native peoples in this country and people of color for too much of history. She is committed to recognition and reparation, to awareness and understanding her part in that history. I am not only inspired by Mary, but always thankful for the reminder to wake up to truth, despite the pain they engender.

No matter what land she stands on, Mary feels the presence of ancestors, the first inhabitants of that ground who were often overrun, overruled, run out, run over. To walk in the hills of the Scottish clans and their Celtic ancestors with Mary is to see and feel deeper into them, to feel them beneath your feet, in the air, in the swell of the wind.

The Scottish West Highland Way was the last trip and long walk I took before the world woke up to a pandemic. I am grateful for that trip and the five women who walked with me. It seems right to return to this path now with this beloved friend and to consider the changes in each of us brought by these soul-opening years and consider the path forward. How should we walk it? What do we bring? What must we leave behind?

For next few weeks, I’ll share some of our adventure and the writing, images and pondering that fell from it. This blog only comes to life to record a journey. I am so glad to return to it now. I have missed it this road.

Not to mention Scottish porridge.