SUMMER OF LOVE

I suppose everyone has their first summer romance at some point in their lives, so maybe it was inevitable.  Sam's oldest friend Will, his lady Jam and their kids Lorcan and Maeve came up to the croft for a few days while we were there.  A lot of silliness ensued.

Lorcan, Sam's godson, is a whimsical and imaginative five year old with incredible drawing skills and a penchant for vikings.  Roan followed him around a lot and basically annoyed him.

Lorcan

Then there was Maeve.  She makes our little intrepid athlete Roan look like a nail-biting milquetoast.  She is a totally fearless white-blonde otherwordly Nordic warrior child.  She doesn't get cold.  In Scotland.  She will turn blue but not be bothered. Not even two years old and she doesn't use a highchair or a bib and sleeps in a big kid bed.  Roan was besotted.

We kept catching them off snogging or cuddling (once in Maeve's bed no less!)  or getting up to other shenanigans.  They seem to be able to get into so much more trouble in together than on their own.

 Kissing aside, they seemed to be very intuitive of each other, very connected.  I had so many strange moments where I saw what Roan's life could have been as a twin, how focused and attuned these two little people were to each other with so little language but so much of the same perspective on the world.  It was, as so many things are, bittersweet.

For Roan is was nothing but a joy to have two little Scottish tour guides to show him the ways of the countryside.  Now he will have two familiar faces to return to in the summers to come.

The boys

Reaching for the sky

Lunch in the sun

Hill transport

With Uisdean and Tide

Siesta

Mohawks

Bedtime

THE CROFT

The croft.  If you’ve ever spoken to me for more than 20 minutes I’ve probably mentioned the croft, a little whitewashed box of a house nudged in the hills jutting up from the North Sea in the Highlands.  Going there is as close to a spiritual pilgrimage as I’m likely to get.

On the way up we always stop in a town called Aviemore for fish and chips and to stock up on provisions we won’t find up north (on the list of things you can’t get near the croft: diapers, bath mats, bagels)

Not the healthiest lunch ever

To get there you basically go north on endless single track roads winding through hours of rugged grazing pasture peppered with sheep and cows. The last quarter mile can hardly be called a road.  You feel as though you are about to drive off the jagged rocks and fall off the end of the earth at every turn.

And then you are here.

Heaven

First cup of tea by the sea

Sunset

The house is a traditional crofting farm house that has been in Sam's family for nearly 50 years.  The walls are a foot thick of solid stone.  There is no phone or television, and the house is heated with peat in a small cast iron stove in the kitchen.  There is nothing whatsoever that is precious or excessive. 

I come here to reduce myself to a basic search for sustenance and warmth.  It is not my place here to think or to have opinions.  I am nearly like a child here, fairly helpless, slower to catch on, not so capable as all of my strengths - obstinance, organization, resourcing information - are fruitless here. I am of no use herding sheep, wincing at my arthritic foot at the age of 36 as people twice my age rush past me.  I am easily lost. I lack a sense of direction as one is colorblind.  I can catch mackerel but cannot smash their heads on the side of the boat to put them at rest.  I wrestle with the stick shift and flinch as cars whip past my right side on the single track roads. I cannot build a fire with wet wood and peat.  I am the first to get cold, the first to get tired.  I find it a wonderful relief to be someplace where no one expects that I am capable of very much at all.

So mostly, I take pictures.

Jawbone on the beach

Chatting with Aunt Cis

Reading with Granny

Afternoon tea

A Loch

Roan and I checking the egg box - Photo courtesy of Sam

Roan with his collection of jawbones

Makeshift wagon

Dandelion

In the middle of the best nowhere ever

PHONE BOX

As it is said "necessity is the mother of invention", one could conversely say that "invention is the surly teenager of what was once necessary".  Hence, things like the charming red phone boxes standing idly like awkward hitchhikers on roadsides across the UK, having become obsolete in the age of cell phones.  Or have they...

We came across this phone box in the nearby village of Cleish, who have reconstituted their old phone box into what is aptly called "Information Exchange".  It held everything from Tom Clancy page turners to Rachmaninoff CDs.  All free I believe.  Genius.

Cleish Information Exchange

Is that a bootleg copy of Downton Abbey I see in there?

THE BIRDS

The first adjustment on arrival to Sam’s folks house is always to the cacophony of birds.  Brooklyn is a hyperbolic chamber compared with the racket of Cleish.

Weary with jetlag and achy from 8 hours of being folded like an umbrella into a coach seat, we are welcomed by an army of marching Guinea fowl screaming at us like nasal, honking day traders. Their intelligence is betrayed by peanut sized heads angled atop grey speckled football shaped bodies. They yak away at anyone that comes within 50 feet and sidewind around the yard in a fit of ordered nervousness.

Guinea Fowl (and a soccer ball.  Can you tell the difference?)

Never heard a Guinea Fowl?  Here's your chance (turn up the volume for full effect):

Followed by the Guinea Fowl are the chickens.  Is there anything more inherently comical than a chicken?  They sound like a chorus of tattletales, whiny and alarmed.  The Cleish chickens, however, are extremely friendly, too friendly, and they constantly try to invite themselves into the house, the garage, and the car.  All doors must be opened and shut quickly or you will find yourself with a stowaway. 

Photo courtesy of Sam

This was Roan’s first chicken experience.  He wasn’t quite sure what to do with them.

Aunt Cicely explains the finer points of a chicken

Nope, that's the wrong end!

Watering them won't do much either

Are they pets?  Not really, but they were way friendlier than the cat who disappeared at the first sight of Roan. He got to collect the eggs every day - usually about 4 at a time. “Delicate” is not a word in Roan’s repertoire or manner so we had several spontaneous omelettes being made following the egg run.

Then he would let them out of their coop so they could roam the lawn.  Peck and walk, peck and walk.

Photo courtesy of Sam

These are the happiest chickens I’ve ever seen.  A charmed life for a bird, really. They get to eat spaghetti and sit in the sunshine on the patio. They lay eggs with nice hard shells and luminous yellow yolks that are delicious.

Grazing

Sunning

Despite having such wonderful fresh specimens at our fingertips Sam couldn’t wait to get a jar of pickled eggs.  They are foul. (get it? foul? fowl? ha!)

COUNTRY LIFE

Since coming back from Scotland I seem to be trying to return there every day.

Today I took Roan to the Prospect Park Zoo.  Behind the sea lion exhibit is a petting zoo abuzz with about 50 kids pawing at 8 sheep and goats.  There were chickens encased behind glass like Hannibal Lecter.  Anticlimactic doesn't begin to describe how pitiful this meager display of husbandry is compared to life in Scotland.

To whit: city sheep...

... and country sheep

This Saturday I've planned an outing to the Dutchess County fair, complete with a goat pavilion and Rosaire's Racing pigs, an improvement I hope.

OH SCOTLAND! MY SCOTLAND!

Home, at last!

At Meadowhead

WHERE TO BEGIN?

We are back from Scotland and, after three weeks almost entirely off the grid, I am simply not sure how to tackle blogging about such an epic trip.  Therefore I have decided to begin at the end, or ends, so to speak.  Behold, a traffic jam in northern Scotland...