I find it almost hard to believe it’s been nearly 20 years since my second “pilgrimage” to “the old country,” the land of my ancestors, Scotland.  I first drove a circuit around that watery land in 1992 after my mother died.  A very emotional trip.  When I returned in 2001 I was just about to publish my first book, Meditations of John Muir, and Jim Thompson, my friend in Muir’s birth town of Dunbar, tells me the book is still selling in the John Muir Birthplace center on High Street.

A little stunning, and humbling, that my little Muir book was released the same week as the fall of the Twin Towers in NYC.  I’m glad that the book, and the wisdom it contains, didn’t fall along with that terrible day.  Muir’s celebration of nature and the beauty of the wild earth will always lift us, calling us to rise with the mountains.

Wish I’d taken more (and much better!) photographs while I was in Scotland.  Yet I carry so many images and memories of the land, the people, the castles, lochs and walks (rambles, saunters).  In some sense, I think I will always have Scotland within.