Visit to an Island Nation, Part I: Coming Home to Scotland
From: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/122106O.shtm
Thursday 21 December 2006
Note: This is Part I of a two-part series. Part II, "England's Green and Pleasant Land," is coming next week.
For several years now I've had a hankering to go abroad. Though I lived in Germany as a child, I hadn't been out of
North America since the age of ten. After 9/11, America, always provincial, seems to have pulled in on itself even more.
I needed to peek out from under the covers and see for myself what life outside the Homeland is like, so I decided on a
trip to Great Britain.
My trip would be partly a personal pilgrimage to experience the land of my ancestors and partly a quest for answers to
the question of our times: how to live peacefully and sustainably on our small planet? I was curious to see how 60
million people inhabit an island smaller than my home state of Oregon while using half the per-capita energy.
I landed in Edinburgh on a sunny morning last July, and from the air I could see a stark difference in the way things
are arranged in Europe. There is countryside, and there are towns. Houses are clustered in villages and for the most
part, the only buildings that stand alone in the countryside are working farm buildings.
The lack of sprawl was even more startling on the ground when I took a bus from Edinburgh the five miles out of town to
see the Rosslyn Chapel of Da Vinci Code fame. From the city center, we traveled through a dense neighborhood of
townhouses and single homes on small lots. Passing a modest shopping center, the bus rounded a traffic circle and headed
out into fields of nothing but thistles and sheep. No strip malls? Some American tourists next to me gasped loudly at
the suddenness of the transition.
Rosslyn Chapel fascinated me. Chockablock with enigmatic, slowly eroding sandstone carvings, it had everything from
angels to monsters, and a curious depiction of Moses with horns; but Dan Brown to the contrary, there was no sign of the
Holy Grail.
I took one more day to savor what I could of Edinburgh's medieval castles and closes, and then headed west by bus to my
next destination, a village near the coast called Kilmartin Glen.
The bus system in Scotland made for a pleasant experience, with clean and timely buses. Scottish residents who are
retired ride for free, so there was an abundance of lively older folks headed out to the islands for a wee holiday. Free
rides for retired folks strikes me as a great idea, not only for the benefit to the retirees, but for providing a
guaranteed number of passengers that can keep the system robust and functioning. I've had the experience recently of
trying to get relatives passage on the Greyhound in Oregon, and not finding available seats. The rise in gas prices has
unexpectedly increased demand, and the system, long in the doldrums from slack ridership, is not able to handle it. Gas
prices in Britain were about $8 a gallon when I was there.
Kilmartin Glen
Kilmartin Glen is an amazing prehistoric site with hundreds of standing stones, stone circles and hill forts, and an
excellent small museum. I settled my things at the Burndale Inn and walked up the road to the Kilmartin Hotel for
dinner.
After a nice lamb chop and veg, I retired to the bar to taste some whiskey. I passed two evenings there, and got to
know a few of the locals. Peter, the proprietor, his cute cocker spaniel underfoot, guided my whiskey-tasting
experiment. I discovered that Brian, a local road engineer, was a fellow fan of guitarist wunderkind Stevie Ray Vaughn.
And then there was Nigel McPhail, a regular leprechaun who seemed to pass exactly two hours there every evening from
seven till nine. A large, old fashioned key sat on the bar right by his drink. I asked him what it was for. "I lock up
the church after," he said. "Don't let me forget now."
The next day, I got up early and headed out to explore the Glen. I chose this place partly because I would be able to
walk to all the sites. There was a lot to see - a line of burial mounds, the Temple Wood stone circle, many large
standing stones and pictograms. To help me make sense of it all, I engaged a guide, a Celtic storyteller, named Scot
Ansgeulaiche (he gave me the pronunciation, but I promptly forgot it). Scot showed up in a well-worn kilt with a
hand-stitched leather sporran, and we walked out amongst the stones.
According to Scot, the stone monuments were placed by newcomers to the area, the first farmers, who moved onto land
already occupied by hunter-gatherers back in about 4,000 BC. The stone circles may have been solar observatories for
marking the planting and harvesting seasons. Planting at the wrong time during a winter warm spell could result in
disaster if the crops were destroyed by a late spring frost. Insurance was bought by submitting to the discipline of the
solar calendar.
Scot told me that the burial mounds were originally intended as initiation chambers. We sat in one for a moment and I
imagined being shut up inside for three days with no food or water, receiving visions. A light rain was falling outside
and water dripped from the stones. At least I would be able to wet my tongue.
The Kilmartin Museum was also a great help in imagining the Neolithic life. There I saw pre-Bronze Age stone tools,
baskets and eagle bone whistles that reminded me of Native American ones. I've always felt a sense of loss that my
country has no deep history, when of course it does. Native Americans have occupied this land at least as long as people
have lived in Britain. It's just not my history.
Leaving the museum, I wandered into the churchyard next door. Peter, at the hotel, told me there were Templar knights
buried here. The church, established in the 14th century, has a collection of about a dozen carved medieval grave slabs
lying in a crypt, depicting knights in armor and decorated with Celtic swirls and knots. But there are no inscriptions,
so it's impossible to know if these are really Knights Templar.
Going by the number of graves, the population of the village must have been higher in times past. I recalled what I
knew of the Highland Clearances Act. Beginning in 1792, the landlords ended the old clan system of land tenure and
systematically priced the people off the land, replacing them with sheep and cattle. Many emigrated to Australia or
America. Some of them were my ancestors. Here was my history.
I ambled back to the beautiful stone circle at Temple Wood, skirting a herd of cows lying in the path, crossing a style
over a fence, picking raspberries growing along the burn. There are places for 20 stones, but only 13 stones remain.
They are each about the size and shape of a great armchair back. Perhaps they were not a solar observatory at all, but
seats for a council of elders. The 13th stone is broken, its top half gone. I took my place there, resting my back
against it, and I wondered what we can learn from ancient cultures and their ability to live sustainably for long
periods. On the way back I climbed up to a rock outcropping and picked myself some fragrant, early-blooming purple
heather.
A Deep History
Back at the Kilmartin Hotel that night, I am sitting next to Nigel McPhail again and I tell him that I'm traveling on
my own because my husband is a bioregionalist. "He doesn't like to leave Oregon," I say. A taciturn leprechaun, Nigel
nods slowly. "Aye," he says, "I don't ever leave Scotland."
"The world is going to hell, isn't it?" I say.
Nigel looks up from his pint with dark eyes, seeing me. "The children," he says. "That's what I can't stand."
"In Lebanon?" I ask. It has been nearly a week now that I've been severed from my daily news fix, but still, I've seen
a few headlines in passing and I know that Israeli bombs are killing hundreds of innocent people in Lebanon and that the
US is doing nothing to stop it.
Nigel nods, and stares down at his pint once more.
My eyes sting now. "I am so ashamed of my country," I say. I've been prepared for this. I know that everything we have
done in the Middle East for the past five years has fueled what's happening now and even though Tony Blair has been
right there with us I'm prepared to take some heat for America's leading role in this Armageddon. But Nigel surprises
me. With fierceness, this quiet man says, "Never be ashamed of your country. I could never be ashamed of Scotland."
I don't know what to say. I shrug. Maybe that is what having a deep history does for you, makes you unable to turn your
back and say, it's not my country, really. I'm ashamed of those people, it's not me.
Nigel takes his leave. I have another whiskey and joke with Brian - and Jeanette, who runs the little village store.
Then I toddle off to bed to dream heather dreams.
*************
Kelpie Wilson is the Truthout environment editor. A veteran forest protection activist and mechanical engineer, she is the author of Primal Tears, an eco-thriller novel published by North Atlantic Books.