Every year Burns night comes and goes and every year I feel a hint of envy that I am not in Scotland.The magical landscape of the highlands is intoxicating. The closest I can draw myself to experiencing Burns night is by remembering my experience digging potatoes on the Isle of Coll in the Hebrides during the selection week for Project Trust. (The reasoning behind digging potatoes for the selection process was that if I could live in a Scottish community, eat what they ate, fit into their culture and work alongside others, I could be sent to any country on planet earth and survive! )
The Isle of Coll was reached by ferry from the mainland town of Oban. It was a remote beautiful place, with sandy beaches and rugged coastline. A place to swim and explore and live cheek to cheek with creation.
I have recently taken to reading books that meditate on the land and language of the British Isles, Robert MacFarlane's LANDMARKS being one of them. In a chapter titled 'The Living Mountain' he quotes from Nan Shepherd's book written about living in the Cairngorms ...
'Birch needs rain to release it's odour. It is a scent with body to it, fruity like old brandy, and on a wet warm day one can be as good as drunk with it.'
Such evocative sentences! So much is conveyed in those words.
In Robert's book he explores and lists the wonderful vocabulary that grows out of living on the land, words such as ...
- spangin' meaning walking vigorously. - smored meaning smothered in snow. - roarie-bummlers meaning fast moving storm clouds.
I love the power of words, Nan Shepherd knows the land intimately and describes it like a poet using touch as well as sight ...
'The hands have an infinity of pleasure in them. the feel of things, textures, surfaces, rough things like cones and bark, smooth things like stalks and feathers and pebbles rounded by the water, the teasing of gossamers ... the scratchiness of lichen, the warmth of the sun, the sting of hail, the blunt blow of tumbling water, the flow of wind - nothing that I can touch or that touches me but has its own identity for the hand as much as for the eye.'
Drawing out of her rich inner wells Nan Shepherd conveys the magic of Scottish scenery by spilling descriptions across the page ...
'suddenly the work is there, bursting out of its own ripeness ... life has exploded, sticky and rich and smelling oh so good. And ... that makes the ordinary world magical - that reverberates/illuminates. '
'The sound of all this moving water is as integral to the mountain as pollen to the flower, ' Shepherd reflects beautifully.
I will leave Nan Shepherd and Robert MacFarlane there. For those who are also in love with the whole idea of the Scottish landscape lets move from words to pictures. Here is my selection of photos to celebrate Burns night. I have chosen the colours of mint green, red and purple, the textures of wool , fur, tweed and tartan print, the scenery of the Highlands and a floral spray of thistle.
Happy Burns night Scotland.
Photo credits = the sartorialist and instagram, except for the photo taken here at Loseley, me and my tartan coat and red stilettos.