Hello, Wee Lassie

I have an old journal, a battered red thing, stained with water and time. It’s the book I brought to Scotland when I was 18, all alone and breathless with fear and anticipation. The frenetic thoughts of my youth are laid out there, stark and unedited. 

In the early pages, I write of successfully making friends in a hostel and, like any introvert in that situation, it reads like a child reporting surprisingly good grades to her parents. I didn’t have a lot of money, so I spent my free time walking, often accompanied by my new (and equally cash-strapped) Kiwi friend M. down the timeless, mist-shrouded streets of Old Town, Edinburgh. He was a whole three years older than me, and I learned from his 21-year-old “wisdom”. Those were the days.

Here you can find magical portals through space and time.

Edinburgh features narrow, secretive corridors named fantastical things like Fleshmarket Close, Riddle’s Court, and Bells’ Wynd, perfect for the aimless wanderer. It is also the home of Greyfriar’s Kirkyard, long considered the most haunted cemetery in Britain. There, the faces of angels, skulls, and humans alike, carved into headstones in bygone centuries, have faded into smooth, grotesque expressions, the names disappeared into oblivion by the cruel Scottish elements. Cages protecting wealthy corpses from body snatchers still protrude from the earth.

During this time I took to drinking tea with heavy cream and sugar like the locals. I also took to British daytime television and never stopped watching it as a guilty pleasure. I worked as a barista and in a bar. So many small things remain implanted in my memory – the smell of the salty Firth of Forth; the wail of a lonesome January bagpipe; the snapping of the proud Scottish flag on the castle battlements; moss clinging to sodden tree trunks; a dark-stained Gothic cathedral rising from the fog like a shipwreck; I breathed it all in and tried fumblingly to put it to paper, not realizing I was writing for my future self.

It was a glorious time; a golden age of freedom and independence, when everything felt new and possible. I still experience tantalizing, fleeting reminders of it – when I walk up Nose Hill in a stiff breeze, or when the play of winter shadows is just right on a Calgarian brick wall.

When I started my business at 27 without much of a plan or any business training to speak of, it was with a yearning for the rush I felt when I first hopped off the airport shuttle and saw all of Edinburgh Old Town heaped upon itself like a dark medieval dream. Somewhere in that maze – I didn’t know quite where – was a hostel where I had booked two nights. After that it was all a vast, unknown question mark.

For years after I returned home, I felt almost ashamed of how strong my nostalgia was for that brief period. Whenever I brought it up in public, I would try to limit my chatter – because who, in their thirties, dwells so romantically on an experience they had when they were 18? If I want to (and often do), I can draw on this chapter of my past like a stiff drink to ease whatever I’m going through. I’ve questioned how healthy it is to live with one foot in the present, an eye to the past, and only a passing interest in the future.

Recently, I’ve been gazing with more frankness at that 18-year-old, that wee lass, who is both me and not me.

I can see that she had something special. Something that I’ve temporarily misplaced.

There is well-trodden path in romantic relationships – we begin with the initial spark, the honeymoon phase, and then experience a slowing down into nesting and settling and existing with one another that occasionally needs to be prodded back into life with renewed passion and adventure.

I think the same thing happens individually too – we step into adulthood with a freshness; encountering new experiences, yes, but also witnessing ourselves having those experiences. This is a different kind of love affair; a delight with ourselves the first time we have the audacity to drive a car, or get on a plane, or flirt openly with someone.

Our golden youth is The Age of the Spark or The Honeymoon Phase that we have with life itself. And after that, we get better at living. The number of experiences that are brand new naturally decrease as we do more things. We make fewer missteps. The rush of risk-taking fades as we become better resourced.

Our past selves have wisdom that we forget on the road. 

Eighteen-year-old me had less worldly experience but more guts. Fewer dollars but more optimism, often naively so. Not as firm of footing, but a greater ability to choose the lesser-known and infinitely more fascinating road. Less self-knowledge but more passion.

I am happy with where I’ve arrived today, and proud of the woman I’ve become. With that in mind, I must admit that I also feel a growing uncertainty in my soul that comes from outsourcing the things that I’ve decided I’m “bad at”. 

When I travel with my husband S., for example, it’s natural for him to book everything while I daydream. He interprets train schedules with shocking efficiency while I people-watch. He times our movements and skillfully determines which path we’re supposed to take when it diverges in a forest. He reads the maps. Not only is he good at these things, he genuinely enjoys it.

On my own, it’s indisputable that I’m more likely to miss a train. I tend to rely on the good people of the area to turn me around on a hiking trail, and I consistently spend a good fifteen minutes peering at Google Maps before I can orient myself on any given day. But somewhere along the line, instead of doing these things in my own way, I’ve adopted the story that I’m bad at them – that in fact, I probably need people like S around me at all times, or I would dissolve into chaos.

So I’ve decided to prove to myself, once again, that I am a competent, adventurous soul.

Welcome to the announcement portion of this fireside chat! I know that I promised us an endless night discussing the deeper things in life, but I will have to take us briefly on the road this summer before returning.

I’ve booked myself a solo, personal pilgrimage in May; a second honeymoon with myself and life, so to say. Life and I are going to have such a great time. It is the kind of slightly-out-there trip that calls to my soul – one of those experiences that’s not entirely beyond my skill set, but right on the edge of it. 

I’ll be walking the Coast-to-Coast trail across Northern England, from St Bees on the Irish Sea to Robin Hood’s Bay on the North Sea. I’ve given myself 16 luxurious days in case I am taken by the fairies on the way. My plan is to camp most nights in the hills, and the dales, and the moors that I encounter. I will end with a trip to Edinburgh tor revisit my old stomping grounds, and a short burst to Amsterdam, to visit my dear friend H in the city that she now calls home. 

So stay tuned. I’ll be very grateful to have you along for an adventure that promises to take me both backwards and forwards in time.

Thanks for tuning in! If you’re new here and want to read more, you can access the full Happenstance Casebook publication below.