Slow Into The Seasons
Slow Into The Seasons with Alice Elgie
Hope in the Highlands
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Hope in the Highlands

Coming back to zero in Scotland (and underachieving).
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This hidden glen is my medicine. From a high vantage point in a cabin on one side, green extends out as far as the eye can see across an undulating land of small lakes, bog, pasture, and hidden thickets that shelter us from the rest of the world. An array of bushy trees are only now beginning their gentle journey into autumn; tips golden, as if touching the sun. I marvel how it seems to have happened in just a week of my being here. Further still, my eyes are drawn upwards from the valley to the tops of the distant tree line: dark-green stoic pines, a thin layer of solid grey cloud moving slowly above, edges lit up with silver. 

I breathe.

The Highlands in Autumn.

My time here, with my daughter as a trusty travelling partner, has been one of coming back to zero. I had been getting busy—as so many of us do in life—forgetting to breathe as much as I needed to, always seeming to be working towards achieving something, whether it be writing, teaching, studying, learning, growing, supporting, and somewhere in the middle of it all I forgot to simply be. My levels spiked into an otherworldly space where life felt no longer my own. And so, I came here to regain balance.

Several days into this break I began reading a novel just for the sheer love of it. I cannot remember the last time I read a book simply for pleasure. Not to learn something about myself, not to learn something about someone else. No, simply for pleasure. I hadn’t even realised it had been so long…I guess I got lost somewhere along the line. 

Don’t we all get lost sometimes?

Anyway, I read. I read and read. I wake up and read, I go to bed and read. I text my husband and say, “I don’t want to achieve anything anymore. I just want to read novels and lose myself, maybe on a Greek island. Be lost forever.” 

The beauty of coming back to this central point; a place of knowing, of understanding oneself, a place that can only be reached when we learn how to stop, reminded me of the pleasure in pastimes that seemingly have no gain. And yet the gain is plenty: to reconnect with self. To meet again, like on a first date—see myself anew. 

I am thankful for this highland glen that holds a piece of me, makes me feel safe, welcomes me back. There is a fragment of me embedded into its earth. And I think of all the fragments, in all the places, and as I bring them together in my mind’s eye, I feel a sense of peace.

So many ways to come back to zero. So many places to bring me back to myself. 

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Slow Into The Seasons
Slow Into The Seasons with Alice Elgie
🍂 Simplify | (Re)connect | Breathe 🍂 Conversation about nature, writing life, child-led learning, crafts, yoga and mindfulness, life and death, and much much more — all with a good dash of slow: slow for the environment, slow for community, and most importantly slow for ourselves.
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Alice Elgie