Sublime Scotland

I have been doing some reading and thinking about landscape, trying to get a handle on the assets of the region. What is at the core of our land out here that is so in-your-soul?

An answer came during our trip in the contrast between the Scottish and English countryside. Scotland was cold and wild. You could get lost in Scotland. and survival of the elements was not a given. I liked Scotland. By contrast, England was cozy, and I never felt I could ever be fully alone. The English have made nature as accessible as it can possibly be, with a series of public footpaths crossing estates and farms open to anyone wanting a trek. England was beautiful, but it felt safe and managed.

After just a few days in each country, my knowledge is hardly encyclopedic, of course. And this "answer" seems painfully obvious and simplistic.

But this is an element in the appeal of Far West Texas, the sense that nature is big, bigger than yourself. Sublime. Noble. Majestic. Something worthy of greater awe. Scotland has seemingly endless cold mountainsides of ferns and beech, snails and hedgehog and badger. Everything green and wet. We have parched mountains of prickly pear, roadrunner, rattlesnakes and mountain lion. Neither is tame. Both demand respect.

I felt an angry restlessness for many years, feeling a need to break free and breathe, and test my wits on my own. The land here and in Scotland feel a match for challenge, where success and survival are not assured, but earned with strength and grit.