I know that I have written about the relationship between time and space before but tonight, as I sit back in my apartment after a week away in Edinburgh and  an extended (30 hour) journey home, I am once again struck by the feeling of never having left.  Traveling is weird… and wonderful.  There is so much I enjoy about it and so much I tend to endure rather than savour.

It seems like yesterday that I was at the Royal Edinburgh Tattoo, at the spectacular Edinburgh Castle enjoying the precision of pipes and rums and dancers from around the world with thousands of other souls braving the wind and rain and the bitter chill of a Scottish evening.  When EVERYONE stood up, joined hands and sang Auld Lang Syne it was a sight to see and to etch into the memory banks.

It seems like yesterday that our tour van turned a corner and my eyes welled with tears at my first glimpse of the Old Course at St Andrews.  The medieval town with its impressive university seems a fitting backdrop to the birth place of golf.  St Andrews has always been there and I can only imagine how many duffers like me have been moved by the site of the place.

AND Doune Castle where Monty Python filmed The Holy Grail. So interesting and LOL funny. The visit took us back to the medieval times but also to 1975 when the silly, preposterous film was produced there.  The visit was just days ago, close in time yet so far away in kilometres from where I am right now.  And don’t even get me started on time zones and jet lag after 30 hours of travel through seven time zones. 

Now I am sitting at my dining room table remembering.  There are new images and sensations in my brain forever to be associated with Scotland. And I have a new appreciation for where I come from and why I am the way I am.  Scotland, like Nova Scotia, gives me the sensation of home, of fitting in, of feeling welcomed and appreciated for my sarcastic humour and my firm believe in democracy, the rights and responsibility of each individual in a well ordered and unique society of wonderful, fun loving human beings.

We didn’t get to Skye where Clan MacKinnon last held land but I always feel as if I have already been there.  The etheral beauty and the warm welcome in a cold climate are part of who I am as a Love, a Highlander, always willing to fight for a cause, never satisfied until the enemy is defeated.  The enemy for me has always been ignorance and the Scots were the first to wage that battle and fight that fight with introduction of mandatory schooling for young children and free university for its citizens and lending libraries before it was done anywhere else.  Education at an early age produced many unlikely scholars in Scotland.

Tomorrow I am back in the education saddle here in western Canada as I prepare for Wednesday’s free webinar sponsered by UVI PULSE at the University of the Virgin Islands’ Institute for Leadership and Organizational Effectiveness.  Here’s the link to register. 8 am Mountain and 10 am Eastern time on Wednesday the 12th.

http://www.uvi.edu/administration/president/initiatives/ILOE/pulse/events.aspx

Many of you will have already recieved an invitation to attend.  I am excited to be sharing the GHOST protocol “wi’ ye” and look forward to the opportunity. Now to bed … to dream of the banks of Loch Lomond.