The Corran Ferry to…I will quote what one person called where this ferry docks, sounding very much like Wil.i.am - Ardnamazing!
(Corran Ferry to Ardnamurchan, west coast of Scotland)
Postcard From a New World
This morning I received a letter from someone in the middle of a transition; grieving for the world she would soon lose and not feeling connected to where she was going. The reason purgatory is such a powerful idea, perhaps more devastating even than the idea of hell, is that it holds us in an uncomfortable emotional state. We feel we can move neither forward nor back. Despite this, without experiencing limbo, change would not be possible. We are contradictory creatures, resisting change, and yet by nature and in sync with the world we live in, our only constant is change.
Transition gives us time to adjust and to begin to re-calibrate ourselves for where we’re heading. It allows us space to reflect on where we’ve been and what we’ve learned. It’s unsettling for a reason, that being to compel us on. If it was pleasant we’d stay where we are and undoubtedly stagnate.
Speaking from the Land of Transition myself, I know the landscape of which I speak. My Father died one month ago and my Mother will soon follow. She too is in limbo, between two worlds, neither of which she feels she belongs to. These days I feel a little like Doctor Who in regeneration, only from the inside out. I appear as before and sound the same but the internal terrain feels wholly altered.
I have a travel tip for those who are ‘on the move.’ I discovered that being in flux is a lot like a gap year; the perfect opportunity to experience new things, and to learn about who you are now. Why not, you do have something to lose - and this is the best way to do it.
The old bridge at Sligachan, Isle of Skye.
A little snack of a story: When I was pregnant with my son, we chose a name for him around the 5th month, deciding on Seumas. In my 7th month we traveled to Skye for Christmas/Hogmanay. We were living in the Netherlands at the time, and the last thing we did, on the last day, was have dinner with good friends in a hotel bar. The Hotel was at Sligachan and the bar is attached, it’s name not known to me at the time but it did have a name. To me, it was always the Slighachan Hotel Bar. Just hours later I went into early labour and after much drama, a coast guard helicopter, an air ambulance and three other ambulances, we ended up In Alexandria and Seumas was born. The name of the bar - ‘Seumas’s Bar,’ of course.
Looking through the trees toward what was, my first home on Skye, a youth hostel. I landed in stormy weather, choppier and much wetter than this photo with wind that nearly blew me over. If I think back to those days, I can still remember the excitement and novelty of everything, trees but not the same trees, different food (I learned to love tea during this time which was just as well), Hobnobs (still love those), the smell of the gas fire, the damp cold that seemed to penetrate to the bone, but mostly, the most beautiful, astounding place I had ever seen.
(Armadale, Isle of Skye)
Before the epic bridge, long before Caledonian MacBrayne and their modern ferries there was this small ferry crossing from Kyle of Lochalsh on the mainland (meaning ‘strait of the foaming loch’ in Gaelic) to Kyleakin Skye. Look at the wicker traveling hampers on the dock and the gleaming car - what an adventure it must have been.
(Photo source: Elgol and Torrin Historical Society)
