Page 3 of Some Like It Scot
With a media preview, especially if the reviews were good, Mrs. Lennox could start her new business on a successful trajectory. Word of mouth mattered. And influencers, bloggers, online personalities, and magazines had a way of making a big difference in spreading the news far and wide.
“Besides, you’re a big fan of all things quirky, and I think this place might be right up your alley.”
Quirky? To be fair, anyone who decided to re-create an entire era for tourists possessed a unique passion and determination that wasn’t exactly normal, but the way he saidquirkyraised my internal alarm.
I looked down at the phone in my hand, trying to decipher Dave’s comment. “How quirky?”
“I guess you’ll just have to find out.” Dave’s voice took on a chipper ring. “You live for the adventure, so I couldn’t think of a better person to representWorld on a Page.”
“Dave?” My voice cracked slightly, even as my boss exuded confidence.
“I look forward to seeing your articles on this assignment, Katie. And those edits!”
Dave’s avoiding explanation did not bode well for my misadventuring future. “Do you know something about this place that I don’t?”
“Gotta run, Katie! Talk to you soon.”
“Dave!” I frowned down at the blank phone screen.
Not cool! Especially after I’d just been mentally praising his good-hearted attributes.
I raised my chin and stared back at the horizon.
I could handle quirky.
How bad could it really be? I’d been plenty of places, quirky and all, so aDownton Abbeycosplay didn’t sound all that bad. The dresses, the hats, the handsome men in eye-catching suits.
I shrugged away the doubt and took a few more photos before climbing back in the car. Archie greeted me with “Just let me know if ya need another snap or two. I got all day.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, fighting a smile. “I bet you do.”
He laughed before steering the car down the hill.
I avoided asking him to stop yet another time within five minutes, although the views kept captivating me. Something inexpressible wove among the forests and mountains of this place. A strange sort of magic.It had gripped me as soon as I’d stepped off the plane in Inverness and breathed the crisp, Scottish morning air for the first time. Kind of like that feeling I had right before a good cry when I wasn’t at liberty to let the tears free yet. Not bad necessarily. Not good either. From the time I was knee-high to a grasshopper, my grandpa (a proud Scots-Irish Presbyterian who owned a kilt, collected historic Scottish weapons, and played a bagpipe poorly) raved about this country of his kindred, so maybe a little bit of preconditioned déjà vu inspired the strange feelings coursing through me as we drove through the diverse countryside. But I couldn’t shake it.
I’d traveled to dozens of countries, stepped off even more airplanes, but had never felt as if I’d walked into a scene of my own life that had been waiting for me to live it.
Is it possible to feel a genetic link to a place you’ve never visited?
Whatever it was, some strange swoosh of welcome blasted through me as if every one of my grandfather’s ancestors had risen from their battlefield deaths and shouted a hearty and ironic, “Lang may yer lum reek!” a phrase Grandpa translated as “May you live long and prosper!”—a Scottish version ofStar Trek’s Spock’s famous salutation.
Maybe “quirky” just went hand in hand with Scotland, which, for some reason, helped me feel even more prepared for the adventure ahead.
“You’ll have to visit Tobermory once you get tucked in, Ms. Campbell.”
I looked up from scanning over my photos and registered the village name in my mind from research. Aha! The capital of the small island.
“It’s the place with all the colorful houses along the coastline, isn’t it?”
“Aye,” came Archie’s warm reply. “But there are quite a few villages with the same. Glenkirk is no far from Craighill and is one of the few villages along Loch na Keal.”
With the island being so small, I didn’t imagine a massive number of villages, but as the hills grew in size and breadth, the wide-open emptiness of the vista resurrected the unsettling feeling I kept trying to ignore.
“There’s Briggs Mussel Farm,” Archie announced. “We’re close now.” He slowed the car’s speed for my ogling pleasure—and likely a few extra coins in his purse.
Another mussel farm. Probably the fourth one I’d seen since disembarking the ferry at Craignure. Yep, this island maintained its fishing town persona. Maybe that’s what gave it an untouched, old feeling.
The green hillsides framed the loch on two sides with taller, more barren mountains rising behind those in imposing hues of gray and olive. And yet, the desolation created its own sort of mesmerizing beauty.
