Not even a month has passed since I squashed my remaining belongings into Rusti, jolted down the birch-lined track of my temporary home in Achmelvich (a haven of peace and decompression where bullfinches, voles and a pine marten were daily visitors to the garden) and bid farewell to Assynt, yet it already seems a lifetime ago. Armed with an obscene amount of chocolate cake from my lovely workmates at Highland Stoneware – which was more or less obscuring my bench when I called in for one last coffee, and a goodbye that none of us could really believe I was saying – I drove away with a very different set of emotions than the last time I fully deployed the ejector seat, nearly twenty years ago.
This time, I have little doubt in my mind about where home is. There are myriad reasons why I can’t live there right now. I might never again, although it has always claimed me back in the past. And I have long since given up pretending the place is not in my soul. I have Vistas Sketching Holidays now, of course, providing reason and excuse for regular visits. But to make sure I never lose sight of what is truly important, I am taking a permanent reminder of it with me: the flower which symbolises the place for me, exquisitely ‘painted’ from my own design by Eilidh at Fasaidh Tattoo in Inverness. A leaving present to myself.
As I drove away, a favourite joke sprang to mind: ‘Happiness can not be found at the bottom of a bottle of wine, but you should at least check.’ By the same token, I know there is nowhere on Earth more beautiful than Northwest Scotland. But I still need to check.
I am leaving some wonderful people behind as I edge ever further away. Some are bewildered by my choices and believe I have lost my mind. Others express sadness. Most understand that I have to go, at least for a little while, but a select few of treasured, like-minded souls are cheering me on. My beautiful friend Gita sent me this, and I can’t imagine a more eloquent way of explaining it:
‘To be truly challenging, a voyage, like a life, must rest on a firm foundation of financial unrest. Otherwise, you are doomed to a routine traverse, the kind known to yachtsmen who play with their boats at sea… “cruising” it is called. Voyaging belongs to seamen, and to the wanderers of the world who cannot, or will not, fit in. If you are contemplating a voyage and you have the means, abandon the venture until your fortunes change. Only then will you know what the sea is all about.
‘I’ve always wanted to sail to the south seas, but I can’t afford it.’ What these men can’t afford is not to go. They are enmeshed in the cancerous discipline of ‘security’. And in the worship of security we fling our lives beneath the wheels of routine – and before we know it our lives are gone.
What does a man need – really need? A few pounds of food each day, heat and shelter, six feet to lie down in – and some form of working activity that will yield a sense of accomplishment. That’s all – in the material sense, and we know it. But we are brainwashed by our economic system until we end up in a tomb beneath a pyramid of time payments, mortgages, preposterous gadetry, playthings that divert our attention for the sheer idiocy of the charade. The years thunder by, the dreams of youth grow dim where they lie caked in dust on the shelves of patience. Before we know it, the tomb is sealed. Where, then, lies the answer? In choice. Which shall it be: bankruptcy of purse or bankruptcy of life?‘
– Sterling Hayden. Wanderer.