The Greatest Slowdown On Earth

One thing about retirement I hadn’t expected was how quickly I slowed down.  For years I never slept past 5:30 and even between 4-5:30 was a normal wake-up time.  I thought I was just like this.  When I retired, I immediately began to sleep until 6:30 or 7.  Secondly and by far the greatest slowdown was the disappearance of the stress of the emotional effort needed to maintain a professional relationship with so many people.  This was such a drain on my emotional energy which I had just grown accustomed to. There were literally hundreds of individuals I had to keep track of and form productive relationships with.  Students, deans, collogues, committee members, administrators, etc.  The last great slowdown was how many daily deadlines I abided by.  Class times, meeting times, eating times, leaving times, arriving times, all kinds of times I had to schedule to meet.  The first thing to go in retirement was times and days.  I rarely know either.  Every day is wide open for one thing, what would I enjoy doing today.  Retirement is rewarding in so many more ways I had never considered, the greatest slowdown on earth.

  

The Lane Less Traveled

I miss Scotland.  I sit in the early dawn drinking good coffee and reading The Greatest Adventure Ever Told and think back on it.  It was a great ordeal for us, alone, often completely, just the vastness of her, the long views of wilderness that stretched to the Arctic, known as the NC500.  Even though we were never in peril, we were often very much alone to our own wits, a little VW we had early on named Ark and sincere prayers for safety being oft said aloud—to Him but to bolster us as well.  The single lanes as much trail as road.  I can remember one morning we had taken one over the upper highlands, a single lane, rising higher and higher into the wilds.  It was cold and windy and at one point I said to my lover, “It would be hopeful to see at least one car to know the way ahead is passable.”  At that very moment, a small truck came around the bend way ahead.  Humans brighten any lonely path, knowing even in our day of ultimate ease, the road less traveled is still being taken.    

 

You Have Covid

"You have Covid!"  So said the doctor.  My lover and I had finally been caught by it.  We were only two days back from Scotland.  We are mending slowly, tough first few days, and now the lingering lethargy drags on.  Neither of us is ever ill, mostly suffering only from years on earth and the wear and wore of the same old body attached to an ever-young, adventuring spirit.  We ended our quarantine yesterday and ventured masked, back into the public, the library, and the grocery.  I must admit we were both self-conscious of our mask, a scarlet letter marking along with its accompanying suffocating restriction.  You have Covid.  We could have done without it.

This is a picture I took of us in customs upon arriving back in the USA.
Another reason we should restrict our government.  It was maddeningly
inefficient and I'm sure a Covid haven.  

             

 

A Prayer of Safe Return While sitting at Fair Haven

What would I pay to tramp around the world and be safe because of Your Godhead over me?  This is truly the question and foundationally the truth.  Betty and I operate on the premise that you are responsible for keeping us safe and bringing us home again, even in far-off places and long trails alone.  Now do we hold these truths so well as to eliminate all worry from our life?  I can only speak for myself, no!  Unequivocally NO!  But there is a caveat to this as well.  I know I don’t have to worry.  Yes, I worry but deeper still is my abiding faith that worry is my problem, a problem with me but certainly not with You.  You are 100% faithful.  Nothing can separate me from your protective love, and its partner, your sovereignty over my life.  Once I accept your command, Christ is my only way to this, then my fallenness does not in any way jeopardize Your faithfulness.  Is this completely understandable to me?  Another unequivocal NO.  But I don’t understand my lover's body heat, but I sure enjoy it!  And so, I am home again safe and sound sitting in my usual spot, drinking my usual coffee, reading the Ancient Text written for me, and talking to my God.  It is the way, the only way, I could ever pick up, take my lover with me, and be off to the wilds of the earth, this blessed, beloved, beautiful earth.  God is King.

Our welcome home party outside 
Knoxville's airport.

Our last picture as we landed in Knoxville after a
221/2 hour trip home.

Down The Rabbit Hole

10-16-2023 Glasgow Airport, 4:53 a.m.

We slipped out of the highlands yesterday, early, moseying along country roads through fields just gleaned, many a sheep spotted green field and saw one last castle.  Within an hour we were flying along at 70mph on a four-lane and the long ordeal to get home had begun.  We turned our car back to Robin, the 21-year-old college student who owns two cars he lets out on Turo.  Nice kid, smart, an aerospace engineering major, and a budding entrepreneur.  We boarded our airport express bus and fell into the Holiday Inn Glasgow Airport.  Flight at 6a.m. Said we must be there at 4 and at 4:22 a.m. we’re sitting at the gate.  We are down the rabbit hole.  

 

God Save the King

10-16-2023 Highlander ABnB, Cruden Bay, Scotland

Yesterday was Sunday and again, as is our habit, we were searching out a place to worship.  I had planned to worship near Balmoral Castle, at Crathie Kirk, which is known as the parish church of the royal family.  We were also planning on seeing Balmoral but when I looked it up it was closed this weekend.  I thought to myself it would be something for Betty if when we got there the royals were in residence and we were able to go to church with them.  This happened one time at Kennebunkport in Maine when we were camping there years ago.  We showed up for Sunday service and the first President Bush was in attendance.  We also once had Sunday School with President Carter in Plains Ga. and Pope Benedict was right beside us at St Peter’s.  So even though I didn’t think it possible the royal family would be there we went anyway.  It was another long and lonely trip on a one-lane road across snow-capped rolling highland hills.  It had turned cold the night before and had called for snow.  Although again we were somewhat hesitant the trip was uneventful, and the one-lane road eventually opened briefly at the small church Crathie Kirk.  We knew immediately something was up because a policeman stopped us and asked our business.  Betty said, “We are hoping to go to church.”  He asked if we had a pass and we assured him we did not to which he replied we would not be able to go but could park and watch the royals drive past.  There was also a company of heavily armed Scottish soldiers standing by to accompany them as they rode up the short hill to the church.  Within just a few minutes King Charles, driving himself and three others, slowly drove by, looked at us smiling, waved, and was gone.  The setting was perfect, in the middle of nowhere, quiet, and beautiful, the king passed.  God, please save the king.

  

 

Even Blew The Grass Down

10-14-2023, Scarfskerry/John O’Groats on the northern coast of Scotland.  In what we would call a tiny home, a Quonset hut made of wood, 15’/10’.  Gale force winds all night, 41mph, rain, and some sleet.

We were shaken and rattled all night as the wind swept the heat out of our tiny fair haven twice driving me out of bed to turn up the heat, a meager little electric floor model barely able to keep down a chill.  Another time when you realize the miracle of your lover being 98.6° is worshipful. Her and a thick comforter allowed us to sleep soundly.  It blew all day yesterday making walking difficult and being outside for any length of time unwise.  These are times when God’s presence is not only welcome but advisable.  The North Sea is a stirring boil, ice-cold blue throwing herself against Great Britain.    The elements are on and are putting on a grand show. I told Betty yesterday “I’m surprised this place hasn’t been washed away eons ago.”  Morning has broken, grey, and cold but our gold star brightens the horizon.  We turn south today after 8 days north, two days to Glasgow, and then a United Magic Carpet ride home to our beloved Fair Haven, a true anchor in the storm.         

The video we sent our family.  Excuse the sentiments shared.  

If you look close you can see the grass blown flat.

 

Earth In Nowhere

10-13-2023, Tongue, Scotland

Rain and wind are howling outside this dark morning, but it is the appropriate score to what lies ahead, adventure.  It should blow itself out by the time my lover awakes, and predictions are for fairing skies.  North of me is the Arctic Ocean and the Pole.  Yesterday we found an abandoned home, the marker said it was built in 1823.  It was and remains in nowhere.  It is in the middle of a great bog set atop a high mountain.  I imagine rain and wind howled outside its walls many a dark morning.  It would have been a hard-won lot.  Someone at some time was moved by its resolve to mark its builders and briefly tell their tale on a small plaque atop a pile of stones.  If I measured myself to the heavens this morning the distance would be unknown and the destination the same, the Earth, our beautiful and safe blue home, would be in nowhere.  

The wind continues to howl outside.  I have laid aside my Most Ancient Book.  I will wake my lover and we will continue on in nowhere, on our planet, our good planet Earth.  And God is.  Amen

 

VW Tour Bus

10-12-2023, Ullapool, Scotland

If it could get any more wild, vast, and isolated we would be in Eden.  Five hours on one lane gripping the edge of the earth.  Into wild forests now teeming with great redwoods and back out again for 30 miles of wilderness held by the North Sea.  Our star was out yesterday, and it was like the kiss of God. Overflowing colors abound across infinite spaces.  There is nothing here but immeasurable views of beauty.  And in this titanic my lover and I sit in our voyager, a small Volkswagen, a haven of warmth and protection puttering our way along the ancient routes of ancient peoples.  It is a joy of soft solitude, a cleft in the rock for us to be with God as He tours us through his earliest works.  

Looking back on the road we were on.

   

 

The Thin Veil to Primal

10-11-23  Dornie, Scotland

It is raining.  It's dark morning but I can hear it pounding the roof and the deep soft rumbling of thunder in the hills around.  It rained hard on us yesterday, but we stayed the course and were rewarded with stunning beauty.  We rode the coastline of the Isle of Skye, along a thin line of road skirting the edge, pulling up long draws and ever where the vast of bare land rose and fell away.  It is intimidating in a way, such vastness of wilds, few signs of mankind, and the rain and fog can seem foreboding because the elements are really up against you personally, no one to go your bail here.  But it also brings out the primal knowledge of you, you as a human being, a member of God’s great race, humans, who have done it. Have come up against it and moved on, passed through, made a way.  Your people didn’t stay put.  My family, 10 generations ago, moved from here to America.  They had to take a sailing ship and they found another wilderness greater than they left, greater than any known before.  And here I am listening to the rain in the same country that bore them—bore me and mine.  I often feel we are just one generation removed, one thin thread, one bare veil away from primal.  If called for, I think we would do it, just go forth. 

    

How we looked after the hike above.

A Garden of Earthly Delights

A day in sunny Scotland is to be celebrated as this morning we awoke to pouring rain and biting wind.  However, yesterday was glorious, sunny, warm, wild, and opening vast open spaces of beauty.  We finally made it to the NC500, a five-hundred-mile loop around the Northern Highlands laid out in the most remote and beautiful areas of the country.  As we rode through, I thought about how I was to convey this in words a feat beauty often denies and again this morning I find myself struggling to express what we saw yesterday.  Mostly it was barren beauty, nothing obstructing our view for thousands of acres of rolling wilderness, over more than a hundred miles.  The road is often single-lane with pull-offs, seldom used because of the lack of traffic.  Quite, solitude, just God, my lover, and me and a garden of earthly delights. 

  

A Tennessean's Primeval Homeland

Monday, October ninth. Morning, dark thirty, on the coast of the North Sea in Connel/Oban Scotland.  This land is a loneliness, a faraway, a quiet, cold wind pushing glowing fog up and down her banks.  It is cold, moss-deep covered, ancient groves of trees each one a clarion.  It is a setting for great tales, fairy, and warrior, tribal and seagoing, which grips the land and your imagination as you wind through deep forests and high bare hills along more trail than road.  It keeps you, it has you.  And as if to declare its welcome, white rams and sheep lay strewn about, one here, another away off there, each hailing whitely.  It is a sacred land, where great peoples, great kings, and great warriors used to roam.  And roam you would have to.  There are no easy ways here, just narrow paths through an ancient land, each furlong pushing against you all the while, opening before you great beauty, drawing you along.  It is an explorer’s Eden, an adventure’s bar…a Tennessean’s primeval, homeland. 

 

Choose Joy

Sunday, 7:36 a.m. Glasgow, Scotland

It begins today, in a couple hours we will head NE into the Scottish Highlands.  It is the Sabbath and as is our joy we hope to worship in God’s house today.  Worship is a sacred right, a choice, a command.  We have a right to worship and a Person to worship.  It is one of the greatest gifts and privileges we have, worship.  If one chooses not to participate one is much less than they can be.  Worship is fundamental to being human.  No one can love, see a baby, feel warmth, gaze at the blue sky; truly know themselves, and not feel the desire even the longing to worship.  To deny the desire is false; to deny the act is impoverishing.  It is like denying yourself a great kindness, choosing instead, barrenness.  “Choose joy!” is a command from Whom we worship.  Choose joy.      

 

On The Road Again

Saturday, Oct 7, Glasgow, Scotland

I have woken in a far-off land, Scotland, to a rainy Saturday, as my lover sleeps soundly away the weariness of yesterday’s long journey.  We are back on the road after a long hiatus; back where we both long and belong.  It was a 22-hour trip, Knoxville, DC, Frankfurt, Glasgow, and air travel has become a maddening undressing, stuffing into tubes, feed, water, feed, water, and spit you out the other end, mauled, weary, and wrinkled.  We hole up for two days to recover, eat well, rest, and reset our bearings, and then tomorrow we will begin to adventure deep into my ancestry motherland.  So here I sit, back in our routine, on the road, The Ancient Text, a good cup of coffee in a beautiful cup, I always bring one with me, listening to my lover sleepily recovering in slumber.  We will bum around today, do nothing but mildly search out beauty to see, relax in, and rest at and then tomorrow we’re off…for Happy trails.     

 

A Cornucopia of Believing

 I love the coming of fall, the slow putting back of the earth, the colors of the dying away are so sincere and giving of their final beauty.  The coming rest of winter, the bounty of earth given and gathered, so kind, sharing such wealth of food, flora, and green.  It reminds you of the bright green of spring and its sense of the coming bounty now laid by and put up.  It is quiet in fall, the hushed of the spent, of a job well done, of the earth being exquisitely productive for another year, sharing…always sharing.  And God is easily known, His divine provision is never more blessed than when our barns, bins, and cupboards are brimming.  A cornucopia of evidence of God, Christ Jesus, and the blessed Holy Spirit—oh, children of men, how glory spreads out before us at the coming of fall.  

We cut a trail to the top of Mount Brown where we will 
have our family cemetery.