Magic and Meaning in the Scottish Highlands

We can’t capture magic in photos

Somewhere in the Scottish Highlands. Even if I could tell you where, I wouldn’t.

The pictures speak for themselves, but still can never do their subject justice. Like all tourists, I yank out my phone everywhere I go, vainly trying to take some of this beauty home with me. It’s a decent phone, an iPhone 11 I think. But whatever photographic skill and technology it takes to capture an image that matches the experience of being in the Scottish Highlands, I don’t possess them.

The pictures I take can capture the outlines and scale of the soaring, green mountains. The images can show how blue the sky above those mountains are. And I suppose that if you pinch and zoom, you could get a glimpse of the yellow flowers blooming inside all that green, sprouting between the ancient, wild stone that blesses the place its otherworldly wildness.

But the version of this place that will live on in my iCloud storage will always be dead and unsatisfying to revisit.

They can’t perceive the slow, gentle waving of the high grasses as the wind, brisk and dry, runs through them. I might remember the birds that were there, adding their high-pitched squawks to the rhythmless whooshing of the wind and crackles of breaking water in the rivers and lochs. But I won’t hear anything in the photos.

The pictures will always have beautiful colors, give the Apple engineers their due, but they won’t show me how the colors brighten and dim under the shadows of passing clouds. They can’t grasp the subtle changes in the temperature of those colors as the sun rises higher, then dips lower in the sky as the day comes and goes.

So I’ve tried to snap my pictures quickly because we feel we have to. But I save most of the time I have to spend here just sitting, looking, listening, and touching the soft, luxurious tops of the high grasses around me. There’s also a wild, pine-like shrub here that blooms with bright yellow flowers that smell like heaven. I gently squeeze the bristles of these and feel the hard razor sharpness of the needles push into my skin, admiring the cruel natural defenses these green and yellow jewels are blessed with. The beauty here only survives because of its rugged self-assertiveness.

I’m not alone here. Every stop along the winding, terrifyingly thin ribbon of road through the Highlands is peppered with others. Like me, they must be drawn to this place. I also look at them. I wonder if they, like me, feel something profound as they experience the hard beauty of the Highlands. I have come to understand that this place makes me think about the immense will that’s required to carry beauty through this world. And the beauty here is staggering.

And the fact that it exists is remarkable. I can’t believe the money-making world hasn’t found a way to make a theme park out of this. Our way is to distill beauty like this into something safe, easy, and consumable, destroying the very thing we are drawn to.

I wonder what draws the other people, who also risk the dreadful drive (on the other side of the car, for me), walk up the rugged terrain that lacks paved lanes, and avoiding sheep dung if they can. The sheep run wild here too, lacking natural predators for centuries.

I’ll never know the motivation of others, but I was blessed with a glimpse of the meaning this place has for other people.

At one stop, near some stunning vista, I found a still, quiet lake. It was far off the road, preserving itself for a slightly more adventurous traveler. I sat at its shore, and took in what I could, hoping my memory can do what photos cannot. The mountains towered high above me in the distance and and waters lapped gently at my feet. I sat on a grassy ledge and cried.

I don’t know why the place brought tears to my eyes, but I do know they weren’t tears of mourning or loss. It was the kind of experience we reserve the term “magic” for. I chose a small rock to take home with me. I needed to keep alive some small connection to the place.

Then, as I stood, I noticed another rock, tucked deep under a canopy of grass where the shore met the Highland grasses. I saw writing on it and stepped in for a closer look.

“Gone but not forgotten.” These words were framed with a few drawings of objects, all painted on a rock and left as a memorial.

Though I wondered what might lay behind the rock, I didn’t dare look. To disturb such a memorial would be obscene, a desecration of someone else’s profound human experience here at this Scottish lake.

My mind conjured a story, of course, and I’ll live with it as truth.

A teenager had spent his life coming to this place with his grandfather, a widower of 25 years who first came here with his late wife on their honeymoon. The grandfather, whose name was Angus, spent his life working as a tailor for an Inverness clothing store that specialized in Scottish wool products. When his Mary Kate, who worked the phones for the local police department, died of pneumonia, something inside Angus died with her. But she made him promise on her deathbed to never stop living life. “Don’t close yourself up and wallow, Angus. Be a light for your grandson.” So after than, Angus took little Jimmy out every weekend somewhere. During the summer when the weather permitted, they came here and swam and ate and told tall tales of the old days. Angus even snuck Jimmy his first beer here, proud of how mischievous he’d become. And now Angus went on to be with Mary Kate. Little Jimmy made one last trip here with his rock and swore he’d be bringing his own kids to visit.

None of that ever happened of course, but I don’t really want to know what inspired this beautiful memorial, tucked under a shore that hopefully no one else will ever find.

The point is that places like this mean something to some people. And we can take the pictures, but the pictures can’t replace the real experience in the place. Because the place is magic.