The train rattles north past ochre hills and steel grey lochs. Curtains of rain are being blown across the landscape but every once in a while, the clouds lift and I watch the lochs shimmer in the sunlight. The train conductor tells me which door I need to wait at, to disembark at this station whose platform is too short for the trains going north. And so I do and hop off the train through the one door that opens, only to immediately find myself inside a postcard. It feels like I’ve left the train at the end of the world. It rains at first but as I am walking down to the hostel, a rainbow suddenly stretches from the clouds down to the spot on the loch’s edge where the hostel stands and I can’t quite believe my own eyes.
Two days later, I’m sitting in the café of the old station house while rain lashes down outside. I could have gone for a walk before the rain really got going, the forecast is for torrential rain for the next few days, but decided to edit some photos and write instead. I have gotten better at doing what feels right for me on a holiday and yet I still hear this voice at the back of my head saying “should” a lot. I should go walking more. I should scale some hill to warrant me being here. But really, all it takes to fill me with awe is simply standing on a path and looking at the hills, or rather mountains, around me. You forget how quiet the world should really be, until you find yourself standing among mountains, suddenly wondering where “all that noise” is coming from, only to discover that “all that noise” is a stream about two meters away from you.
I’ve intentionally put myself in a hostel without wifi and phone reception and while I’m glad that I can walk 20 minutes up the path for some wifi, I also slip quite easily into this new routine of only using my phone to listen to a podcast or an audiobook before bed. I thought I’d struggle more but really, I know that, most of the time, I’m on my phone because my hands are looking for something to do and less because I believe I’m missing something. It’s a tiny place, this hostel on the shores of a loch, only offering a bed to around 16 people. Two dorm rooms are on either side of a kitchen with a fire in the centre and two drying racks suspended from the ceiling.
On my last day there, K and I hype each other up to go for a swim in spite of the rain. Everyone thinks we’re quite mad but to us it feels like such a thrill to descend the slippery stairs into the icy grey loch as rain drops break its surface. Tannins have dyed the water a golden brown and so our arms, as we swim, shimmer golden, too. We spend the evening talking, eating chocolate and drinking whisky, Y had brought some too, and all three of us brought chocolate. We had never met before and I doubt we’ll ever meet again but for that one evening we were friends, connected by this very special place.
“Such moments seem to mean that you have surrendered to the story being told and are following the story line rather than trying to tell it yourself, your puny voice interrupting and arguing with fate, nature, the gods.”
— Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost
While out in nature, I often find myself thinking I’m “in the middle of nowhere” or that I’m surrounded by “untouched beauty”. A lot of the reading I’ve done this year has taught me, however, that this is a very colonial way of looking at the world. Almost nowhere now is untouched. The Scottish Highlands, too, are in no way untouched. The bare, currently orange-brown, hills are devoid of trees and all attempts at re-wilding (itself a very strange word if you think about it because why would nature need RE-wilding if, really, it should never not have been wild) often fail because stags will eat the young shoots before they have time to become trees. And why are there so many stags, I hear you ask? The stags are there to be hunted by rich and well to-do white people.
The stags can be heard across the highlands at this time of year, their roars echo between the mountains and I can hear them at night on the shores of Loch Ossian and further north on the slopes of Stac Pollaidh. On the one night it doesn’t rain torrentially in Glen Coe, I suddenly rush outside because I thought I’d heard an owl. S is outside, too, taking in the surprisingly clear night, and there it is again, a hoot somewhere among the trees. I hear the waves crash from my bed in Edinburgh during another storm and on one clear night in Loch Ossian, I see a shooting star and just about remember to wish for something. Being somewhere quiet and still is such a gift when you pause to notice it.
“I like the quiet, she says, and he nods, like he gets it, and he’s making this whole thing harder just by being him, and understanding. She has never known a person like him.”
― Claire Daverley, Talking at Night
It rains and rains, often almost horizontally, and the Met Office website tells me that this is how it will always be now, between October and December. Climate change means the air around Scotland is warmer than it should be in autumn and warmer air can carry more moisture. More moisture, of course, means more rain. So much rain, in fact, that Scotland fulfills its rain quota of the entire month of October in one weekend. On some days, I face the rain and head out. It soaks through layers of waterproofs and sometimes the rain turns to sleet. But I enjoy the feeling of getting battered by nature, the rain on my face and the wind trying to push me sideways off the path. Something about it makes me feel intensely alive.
I walk the Quiraing and for an hour, I am all alone, bar a few sheep. I can see for miles and everything feels so free and quiet that I cannot believe my luck. I later tell a friend about this day and he wishes he could experience that too, stuck as he is in a noisy city.
I do not take the quiet for granted. I revel in it. I allow myself to stand in awe at the sheer scale of the landscape. But I also return from Scotland not as rested as I would have liked. I still feel like there’s something gnawing away at me. My neighbour concludes, a week after I’ve returned, that I shouldn’t be surprised at that. “You’re in your head a lot,” she says “and you’re taking that with you wherever you go. But,” she adds, while we’re both getting cold feet on our respective balconies, “the things you’ve experienced and the places you’ve seen will come back to you.” I know she’s right, they always do. And maybe that can be enough. Maybe the memory of the quiet and the far horizons are enough, even if the calm didn’t make it all the way to my heart.
I cannot send this out without addressing the horrific violence that is happening in Israel and Gaza.
Terrorism and the brutal killing of innocent people is wrong and abhorrent but so is the bombing of civilians, most of them children, and cutting off their access to food, water, electricity, telecommunications and vital humanitarian aid. We need the remaining hostages to be released and we need a ceasefire. And we all need to be vigilant against the rise of antisemitism, islamophobia and racism.
So what can you do?
There are many human rights organisations demanding a ceasefire and you can go and sign their petitions. Amnesty International is one of them and they are also putting a lot of information about the conflict on their website. They are also demanding that social media companies do more against censorship and misinformation in relation to the conflict.
You can write your MPs and ask them to step up and demand a ceasefire and access to humanitarian aid for Palestinians. I emailed both of my local MPs because the German position in this conflict continues to baffle me at times.
But most of all, educate yourself. There are so many educators on Instagram and TikTok who have the knowledge you don’t, so listen to them. Listen to a broad spectrum of voices. Listen to Jewish voices and Palestinian voices, listen to scholars of colonialism and those who address the role that yt supremacy plays in all of this. Educate yourself on the ways antisemitism shows up in places you don’t expect it to, looking at you, Gringotts goblins, and do the same for systemic racism and white supremacy. Question your own opinions and the ideas you’ve held so far. Imagine that there are things you have never been told about this conflict, google “Nakba” and most of all, know that different things can be true at the same time.
Some content I’ve found helpful is this by Joris Lechene (he’s done a lot of videos but this is a good start), this by danim334 on TikTok (available to watch even if you don’t have an account), this by Dr. Raquel Martin, this video in particular by Isa Segalovich but all of her content on this conflict is a worthwhile watch, and also everything by The Slow Factory and this letter from the editor-in-chief of Jewish Currents. If you’ve got more time, then I also recommend this interview with Ta-Nehisi Coats on “it’s complicated” and this podcast with Naomi Klein. And if you are a white person, which I know most of you will be, I cannot urge you to read “White Women” by Regina Jackson and Saira Rao more.
“Your privilege is not a reason for guilt, it is part of your power, to be used in support of those things you say you believe. Because to absorb without use is the gravest error of privilege.”
Audre Lorde, Commencement Address at Oberlin College 1989
Beautiful as always. Thank you also for the resources you shared regarding the conflict and horrors occuring in Israel and Gaza. x