Coming from the glen into the city centre

The Paps of Jura (Sgurr na Chiche) is a classic western Scotland/Scottish isles hillwalk across blanket bog, along the sturdy saddle of land between each rise and then up the scree and Jura quartzite hills. Along the way to Beinn an Oir, Beinn Shiantadh, or Beinn a’ Chaolais, there is a wide-open Scottish glen. What few trees attempt to grow here succumb early to salty wind and the grazing of thousands of red deer (meaning there are no trees). This is my favorite kind of walk. Here, in the wilderness of the glen, along each saddle, or atop one of the Beinns, I can see for miles in all directions and know that it is just me and whatever flora and fauna live or grow or fly over the landscape, wild and natural and true. In these spaces, I feel safer and more at home, both in the landscape and in myself than anywhere else in the world.

Much of what draws me to the hills and glens is also what entices me to write fiction. When I drop into the mystery of a new character or scene or setting, I find myself in a place of expansive possibilities, in the same kind of beautiful wilderness as a great glen. Both are grand places to hide from the pressures of the world, of to-do lists, societal and familial expectations, a dissolving of what I ‘should’ do or be or have, an opening into simple movement, an awakening of the senses into an exploration of what is real and true in this moment. As I make my way along my solitary exploration, whether it’s fiction or places like the Paps, I find myself exhilarated, enlivened by a tinge of fear, yet trusting that my footfalls are the right ones for the journey.

            With fiction, I write alone, share with a very few trusted friends and then an editor and a publisher. In the past, the work has walked on in the world, making its own acquaintances while I retreated to drop into another mystery, to journey alone in another wild expanse. Now, though, writers are increasingly required not only to shepherd their work into the world, but to bring ourselves along with it.

So, here I am, starting this Substack. It’s like walking out of a beautifully bleak, uninhabited glen into the center of a busy city. I’m good at reading natural landscape, following blazes on trails in the US or waymarkers or just the landscape in Scotland, a trusty topographical map tucked into my rucksack should I need it. I’m not so good on crowded city streets, getting turned around easily. And yet the timing of the publication of When the Ocean Flies is in confluence with inner work I’ve been doing over the past couple of years, since I finally walked away from a decades-long career that was clearly no longer where I belonged and found myself forced to drop into the wilderness of my soul. One of the results of that ongoing journey is the pull to enter this space, to share what I have learned and am learning as I go about returning to self and living from that wild expanse.

            Perhaps not surprisingly, this is similar to the choice that Alison, the protagonist in When the Ocean Flies finds herself facing. She’s an adoptee, in her fifties, in the middle of a divorce and approaching having an empty nest when her biological father dies, pulling her back to Scotland for his funeral and an unexpected series of events, internal and external, that force her to face the secrets of her past.

            Near the start of the novel, she sits atop a craggy hill on an island off the west coast of Scotland. “A lone raven descends through the clouds, then lands on a blade of rock at the cliff edge. Some ancient teacher told us that they swooped down on the battlefield to pick at the dead. Vic’s mother said the goddess Morrigan assumed the shape of the raven during Samhain festivities…a time when the portal between the worlds lay open. These birds, they said, were seers. These memories feel like more, as though these moments are a gnarled tree branch tapping at the windows of my self, again and again: look here, come in, remember.”

            As the novel progresses, Alison realizes that she can continue in a life that she thinks she’s supposed to lead, or she can answer the call of her soul. In so doing, she risks losing everything and everyone she has ever loved. But if she doesn’t, she risks losing herself.

If we’ve built lives based on what we’re ‘supposed’ to do, turning in the direction of soul can be terrifying at any age, but here, beyond the years of building career and raising family, when we’re ‘supposed’ to be on the (supposedly) stable run towards retirement, well. On the one hand, it feels as though there’s no room for error—no time to recover from a costly mistake. On the other hand, it feels as though the quickly-ticking-past years mean there’s also no time to dither.

If we are to build nourishing lives for ourselves, we must learn to drop into the mystery. We must slough off all that has kept us from our selves, take the first steps in whatever fresh place our inner landscape points us to, feel the surge of fear, trust our footfalls.

            As we end one year and prepare to enter a new one, I invite you to your own exploration: What is it, for you, that has been tapping at the window of your self, your soul? I encourage you to sit, perhaps with pen and paper nearby, to still yourself, to breathe. Allow everything outside the building and then the room and then the desk and then yourself to fall away. Drop into the mystery of that great glen within. What would you shed if you hadn’t been told you were supposed to do, be, or have it? If it were an article of clothing, what would it be? How would it feel? Would you sell it, burn it, give it away, fold it up carefully and place it in the attic? In its place, what calls to you now? How might you take one step in that direction?

Happy Hogmanay (Scottish New Year’s Eve) and Blessings for the Year to Come,

Heather