Scotland/ Alba/ Caledonia.
I was born in Edinburgh- the Capital City. I am Passionate about this place, Very Wildly Passionate. I could write for days about the ways I Love Her and why. And THIS is the place I call Home, This is my Roots. I grew up on the slope of an extinct volcano, nestled between the Pentland Hills and the River Forth. It is a place teeming with rich delicious magic.
While I adore travel and exploring, I find it too hard to leave Scotland for too long. I feel very intimate with her rhythms, vibrations, textures, palates, plants, animals, myths, legends, mysteries…. There is a deep sense of place and relaxing into the land in it’s deep familiarity.
I have heard the songs this land sings, since I was a baby. The songs are never anything other than Love. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hear lilting romantic Gaelic or Celtic melodies (well… Sometimes I actually have!) but it is a song made of vibration, of colour, smell, taste, sounds, texture, matter, native plants, rivers, lochs, mountains, unseen realms and such and yes of the people who have lives and worked these lands and all the ancestral influences…. The vibrational songs of the land can be like a soothing balm when my soul feels shaky, it can be like a lullaby when internal storms are raging. It always feels motherly and ancient and So familiar and it holds me.
This country contains a lot of deep medicine and energies, it is a very sacred and ancient land. Beyond the tales and legends I learnt when I was little of the Kelpies and Giants and more, I feel the physicality of the land, the way it moves through me and in me and IS me.
Sometimes I am invited out of town, down to the Borders perhaps. This place in the country feels very soft and feminine and motherly, welcoming and holding. The hills are rounded, gentle, abundant and absolutely covered in sheep and lambs in the springtime. Sometimes I maybe go to the West Coast Highlands and this place is very wild, stark, rugged and masculine with towering mountains. And also all the places in-between including the beautiful Big Trees of Perthshire, where I have spent a lot of time or the gorgeous beaches of the East Coast.
I hear the songs from all of it, direct to my Soul. The colours and textures have been exceptional medicine for me. Upon the moors, it may initially look very barren and bleak and empty but look harder, there is such abundance of colour, life and biodiversity and it weaves in a soul blanket for me- Every, Single, Time. I sometimes look at the pallets as inspirations for painting or creativity but I couldn’t begin to paint what I see, I can’t even capture it Truly on camera as sensors are too limited in their spectrum and can’t pick up the vibrational hum of the song.
What I Love about this land are the seasons. I would find it challenging to live somewhere that had less obvious seasons. Right now we are plunging into more dark days and significantly colder temperatures. This place is very evident with the turning of the Celtic Medicine wheel, which has just moved into a New Year and New beginnings.
The invitation has been to get slower and quieter and to listen more. To walk upon the land and to really listen deeply with no judgment, just presence. Keeping opening deeper to the land and the magic that She offers. And I will keep giving back to her with prayer, respect, song and so very much love.