“I’ll ride the train with you guys for a bit tomorrow, but I’m heading up to Fort William. It’s supposed to be the adventure capital of Scotland, but I’m not all that excited. I’m ready to go home. For me, the trip is over, but the journey isn’t complete yet.”
Ellie: “You know, you may really need that transition time before you return to your life back home. Time in between for processing could be a good thing for you right now. We’ve just had an intense week.”
As we parted for the very last time on the train the next day, they again reminded me to live boldly into the coming days of transition, and see what God had in store for me.
I guess what I feared most, after leaving Iona, was the complete vacuum of people that I’d come to love as we’d spent the last week together. Splitting up was hard enough, but facing the next five days completely on my own again was daunting. I was also not excited about being a transitory backpacker again: changing hostels and cities every one to two nights, repacking my bag (which got heavier at every city or town I stopped in, and my least favorite, sharing hostel dorm rooms with up to twenty people.
The next five days (two in Fort William, three in Edinburgh) did indeed become valuable transition time. I stayed in a small hostel just outside of Fort William, in a town called Corpach. And as Brianne, the manager of the hostel told me, there was nothing to do in Corpach except walk or bus the three miles to Fort William. Perfect. The rain and my exhaustion that first night forced me to stay in, ruminate over photos, reintroduce myself to the world via the internet (it’s amazing what one week on a remote island sans internet will do for that little addiction), and talk to Alex, the chatty Finnish guy who’d just moved there for three months to attend commercial diving school. Had I stayed in Fort William, I would have missed all that.
I realize now, that I needed those first few days on my own again to be quiet. I needed to not be surrounded by a million things screaming for my attention, ie, the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh. It was tough and sort of scary to step into that space of reflection, to face the pain of longing and missing. I’m glad I wasn’t surrounded by such interesting, numbing distractions. It made that choice to enter into reflection easier.
And so I wandered around Corpach and Fort William for two days doing nothing but that, wander. Okay, I toured a whisky distillery, too. But Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in all of Scotland and England stood in my front yard, and I didn’t climb it. There were adverts everywhere for river rafting and canyoneering, and I didn’t do those either. I just took long walks in the sun, caught glimpses of the Highlands through the low-level clouds, explored the ruins of an old castle, took a nap in the sun in a park by the lake, ate mediocre fish and chips, and cooked for myself for the first time in two months in the hostel.
I somehow managed to book a hostel in the epicenter of all things festival in Edinburgh: a block away from the Royal Mile and a view of the castle from the front door. I could hear the bag pipes, marching, and fireworks from the Tattoo on the castle grounds every night. The road in front was blocked off each evening so the pipe bands could march by. (I never did catch them, so don’t ask! J ) Fringe Festival events (comedy, music, acts) swarmed all around me. All I had to do was hang a right from the hostel door, and I was met by street performers and musicians and plagued by people handing out leaflets for performances. (I quickly learned to say a polite, “No thanks” to the leafletters. Some looked surprised to be turned down) I’m sort of sad that in my transition to Edinburgh, I didn’t carry that peaceful, melancholy remembering. Once I got to that spot, I guess I wanted it to continue. But I know, too, that to expect that was pretty unreasonable.
Quiet reflection and mediation on my summer experiences vanished, but God filled in the gap pretty creatively. In the masses of people, I began to see familiar faces and hear voices I knew. Or think I did. A second glance, every time, proved each person was just another stranger. But instead of choosing to think I lost my mind, I decided to live into the weirdness. I heard the voices of Mike and Matt, a father and son on Iona. I saw Karen, one of our week’s leaders. I even did a triple take on a man who was so very clearly not Ruth, one of the daughters on the farm. He just sounded so much like her, and was even wearing Wellies, those indestructible rubber boots I wore for a full month in North Yorkshire. And finally, I saw these three men who reminded me of no one I knew, but gave me a glimpse of the kingdom of God on earth, and a glimpse of what is to come. One was an old guy in a kilt playing a bag pipe. Another was an African man playing the djembe. The third was a man I’d seen before playing the pipes and dressed up as a fawn. He wore pointy ears and little stilts that were covered with fur. He even had tiny black hooves peeking out from under the fur. This time though, he was playing the drums. All three were jamming together. I thought to myself, so this is what heaven will be like. People of all nations gathered together, making a joyful noise for the Lord.
It was indeed strange, “seeing” so many familiar faces all over Edinburgh, and then the airport, and even now occasionally in Seattle. It’s been pretty awesome, though, because I felt like I was carrying these people I care for in my heart. I never felt lonely in Edinburgh, which was what I feared. Ready to go home, yes, but not lonely.
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