We made it to the Highlands! Apparently anything north of Perth is considered Highlands, but we did a fair bit of driving on little backroads to get into the good stuff.

One night we stayed in a tipi in the backyard of a guy named Torsten. He is a tourguide in the area, and although we got in too late for a proper tour he filled us in on the good places to go. It was one of my favorite nights on the trip; we learned how to open the top and adjust it for the wind, in order to start a fire! We had a warm and cozy night sleeping under sheep skins, and woke up to this beautiful morning:

It also turned out we were only 10 minutes away from Findhorn! (Torsten exclaimed “Can’t you feel your chakras opening?!”) I wasn’t planning on stopping there due to a strange memory of when I came with my family years ago; I remember it being next to an army airstrip with planes actively taking off, and it being very un-welcoming. When we saw the sign we spontaneously pulled in, and it was a good thing. My memory is remade. While I was disappointed that it doesn’t look like an active agricultural center (more like a New Age retreat center), it was friendly with a lot of uniquely built buildings. I was excited to learn they use a Living Machine (to treat the sewage), but the building was locked up. We also pulled over at an old abbey ruin and another castle.

Then things started going wrong. The short story is I have spent every free minute in the last 3 days trying to change 3 plane tickets for more money than they’re worth, and dealing with too many little things going wrong that I downward stress spiraled.

The long version is I realized that morning that I had booked my flight from Casablanca to Zurich on the wrong day (because the cheap airlines don’t fly the day I searched for, and it defaulted me to the next day). It wasn’t until 3 days later and hours of dropped phone calls (all signal is intermittent in the Highlands) that I would manage to change it, for more money than the original ticket cost. It also means I need to juggle the first 4 nights in Switzerland, which I still haven’t dealt with. It was frustrating that the one piece of planning that I thought was done now needs to be re-done.

Then we locked the keys in the car. Neither Kelly nor I have ever locked our keys in, but there we go. I put down the keys and closed the door and she hit the lock button and that was it. Luckily we were about to go into a castle so we were able to call the rental company from the gift shop, and it took only an hour and a half for the locksmith to get there and open the doors. We kept a good relaxed attitude, and even made some jokes about turning into gypsies (what’s the politically correct term?), but the stress was starting to build.

That afternoon we had a lovely drive, although unfortunately it was in rather the wrong direction. Our plan was to go to the castle, then the Culloden Battlefield and stop at some Pictish stones on the way. We did get to Culloden, but after 3 hours of driving around. And when we got there we saw a sign that said the castle was 10 miles down the road!

I have no idea how we managed our tour and don’t regret it; seeing wilderness is my favorite, and we ended up doing a lot of talking about what I should do. I had loosely committed to going to Jordan to meet Jonathan, but my head was still here in Scotland, and in Switzerland, and in Morocco, and in Mongolia, planning planning, and I just couldn’t think about making more changes and going to more places, while still having full days and trying to be present here for Kelly. But after a leisurely walk along a river I just committed myself to doing it, whatever it will cost to change the tickets.

Our long drive was good for that reason, but it meant that we didn’t get to our hostel in Inverness until late, and I stayed up until 1 am trying to deal with the airlines. And in the middle of that I realized I lost my credit card. At that point all of the stress caught up with me. All of the changes, the extra cost of the changes (neither of the airlines offered any refunds or deals), the little things that were going wrong, and the amount of unknowns was too much and I hit a wall. There was nothing to do but go to bed and continue to deal with it tomorrow.

The first thing in the morning we found my credit card in the center console, where I had uncharacteristically put it after getting gas. Phew. I was rather manic, running around and dancing in my seat, as we took another long drive northwest of Inverness to the coast. We stopped in Fort Williams for some whiskey samples and lunch, and then continued southeast through beautiful Glen Coe and into Loch Lammond park where we spent the night.

There I was finally able to make the changes I needed, while sitting in the car outside the pub listening to some amazing live music. Yesterday we drove the rest of the way back to Edinburgh, dropped off the rental car and did some shopping; I have changed my wardrobe from spring/summer in Europe to Autumn/Winter in Asia. And now here we are, on a train to London from where I will fly to Cairo and connect to Amman, Jordan. I will meet Jonathan there and see Petra and other things, then fly back to Cairo for our original plan to see the Pyramids, and then to Morocco. I am still not mentally prepared and I hope I won’t panic on the plane, but there are no days left and here I go. More lessons on stress management, being spontaneous, and trusting that what is supposed to happen will, and it usually works out for the best.