The Return - Part 2 - The Unfurling
On elemental medicine, life's roots are in the bones of the dead and Celestine Prophecy moments.
Old Man of Storr - photo by my friend who hiked to the summit. Isle of Skye, Scotland.
In my last post, "The Return - Part 1" (no points for originality in the title), I wrote about the pilgrimage's need for us to approach it with spaciousness, Scotland's love language, and the power of colors to transport us to the Otherworld.
In today's post, I hope to share the intersection of the outer pilgrimage with my inner landscape.
We don't always get what we 'think' we want
This journey through Scotland was very intentional. It was born out of my wish to spread my mother's ashes in Italy. So, how did the Scottish Highlands come into play? When the time came to get my mother's ashes, I had this clear thought that I should release her ashes in the village where she was born - a homecoming for her soul and a liberation for mine.
That changed my travel plans, and I was open to going where my soul wanted to go, free to roam wherever it led. My intention for this pilgrimage was to mark my journey through the landscape of grief and create space for what wants to blossom and grow in my life now. I wanted it to help give me a sense of Rebirth for me to create something new for myself, unhindered by the pressures of being a daughter. I feel that with my mother's death, other parts of my life also died with her, a key one being my work. Her death cleared the path for my creative self to take center stage, as it wanted to do when I was still in High School. However, life and its expectations took up more space than I had expected, making me unsure of how to tear down or bypass them. But her death liberated the genie of my creativity out of the bottle, and even though I'm not yet sure how to channel it, it's no longer tethered to living her unlived life. The unlived life of a parent is a heavy chain for a child to carry.
So, I wanted this pilgrimage to be a marker for my creative self, and now I can see why the colors of the Scottish Highlands transfixed me. And yet, the land has its medicine to gift.
We get what we need, and with symbolic eyes, we will understand it was what we wanted.
Photo by yours truly. Loch Ness from Urquhart Castle, Scotland.
Elemental Medicine
When we arrived on the Isle of Skye, and I saw its stern majestic mountains, surrounded by its lochs, I felt transported to a land of ancient gods. Gods so ancient that Zeus next to them would be a pubescent boy. It was Rock Medicine in all its mesmerizing rawness, challenging and laid bare. The choppy waters of our modern problems are no more than a low buzz for these ancient gods from when Earth was a maiden. I felt puny next to them, paradoxically wanting their attention while also wanting to pass by unnoticed.
But as the pilgrim, I'm at the mercy of the land and its medicine.
It all came to a head when we went to hike up the Old Man of Storr on Trotternish Ridge, a famous hike on the Isle of Skye. The Old Man is a 55-metre-high pinnacle of basalt rock, which is all that remains of a 2,800-million-year-old volcanic plug. It resembles a needle piercing through the mountain ridge, evoking awe and respect. Standing at the start of the path, I felt a mix of fearful awe at the stern feel of these ancient volcanic gods.
While many tourists hiked past me, aimed at reaching the summit, taking their photos and selfies, I felt the stirrings of an anxiety attack, ink blotting my body. I felt the beginnings of the dread I experienced from my 'bad mushroom trip' a year ago. As I slowly climbed the trek, I had to pause several times, take deep breaths, and find relief from the strong winds sweeping the landscape and the lochs below. It felt like the rock medicine was sandpaper to my energy, stripping me clean and bare. All of a sudden, the very presence of the other tourists around me felt piercing and too much to bear. I was glad for my sunglasses because I could just let the tears roll on by, as I couldn't stop crying.
What helped me stay tethered and not fall into the dark abyss of 'the dread' - as I think of it since my first experience with the mushrooms - was the presence of my guides, and also in sensing the Old Man of Storr. The Old Man's message was simple in its intensity - release the unnecessary weight. He was stripping me clean by sandpapering my soul while my energetic body felt bare and too vulnerable to the people around me. Meanwhile, my guides helped soothe my anxious mind.
I'm not given to anxiety attacks, having only experienced two until the hike. And while I'm calling it an anxiety attack, this isn't true. My frame of mind and willingness to be on this pilgrimage had already opened me up for the medicine of the land, and it delivered. For months before the trip, I had photos of Old Man Storr on my desktop, as it's a place I had always wanted to visit. And here it was, acknowledging what I needed, even if the medicine tasted bitter in the moment.
When I got halfway up the trail, I knew I couldn't go any further. I felt as if the Old Man had turned me away, giving me a sense that I had had enough of its medicine, and I could make my way down. There was no need to push for ego reasons. I didn't make it to the summit, but I got the wisdom from the Old Man nonetheless.
For the rest of the day, my nerves were frayed raw, and I found being around folks like being next to the loudest of loudspeakers. Their energy was piercing, and it was hard for me to control the tears. Sandpapered raw.
Ring of Brodgar in Orkney and me trying not to be blown away by the wind Valkyries.
Wind and Water Medicine
The next day, we took the ferry boat to Orkney, embracing more water medicine and, unbeknownst to us, wind medicine. Orkney felt like another world entirely. It felt both desolate, with its scattered houses, but also mythic, with its changing colors and Viking/Norse vibes.
But what stood out was the wind whipping us from all directions, as if we were about to be transported in a whirl to the land of giants and Valkyries. All the elements hit us at once: rain, wind, sun, and the sea salt brine of its shores. Being in Orkney, I felt transported to another place and almost to another time. I saw our modern comforts, but I felt that if I could scratch just a bit of the surface, I'd fall into another time. Vikings and their Norse gods populated the edges of my mind and imagination.
I got to spend my birthday there, visiting the Neolithic settlement of Skara Brae, the Ring of Brodgar, the Stone of Stenness stone circle, and Maeshowe, a monumental chambered tomb built around 5,000 years ago. Just being in these places was like traveling to a time when our ancestors would have worshiped the ancient gods, I sensed in the Isle of Skye.
Ever since I heard of Skara Brae, I've wanted to go there.
Perhaps it was a past life, but this place had gripped my imagination, and it was a privilege to spend my birthday there. However, when we got to Maeshowe's tomb, I balked at the entrance and couldn't go in. I was overtaken by claustrophobia anxiety, and it was like an invisible wall that stopped me dead, pun intended, at its entrance.
I had to wait outside while the tour group entered the chamber. From the design of the tomb, it felt to me that the entrance was like a birth canal. Wryly, I commented to the older gentleman who also stayed outside due to his height and knee issues, which prevented him from bending down to enter the chamber, that it was my birthday and I had come out of the birth canal and wasn't about to go back in.
I was bummed and disappointed at myself for not being able to go inside, but it was the first time I had such a visceral claustrophobic response to a place. In 2022, I managed to enter Newgrange with just some minor anxiety about the tightness of the entryway, but this time was a 'hell no' for my body.
Perhaps I was still raw from the Rock Medicine of the Old Man of Storr. Best to respect my body and what it needed in the moment. It didn't want to enter a place of the dead, which is in itself intriguing, as I felt that this pilgrimage had a lot to do with death in its many layers, including the environment.
One of the many gravestones in St. Magnus Cathedral in Kirkwall, Orkney. “Memento Mori” = Remember Death. Photo by Yours Truly.
On the Bones of the Dead
One of the few churches that we visited was the St. Magnus Cathedral in Kirkwall, founded in 1137. This stunning red stone church featured an array of burial stones inside, many of which were carved with skulls and the message 'Remember death.'
Seeing death all around, in other churches and graveyards, visiting Mary King's Close with its history of the Black Death, and especially walking the ghostly, atmospheric Battlefield of Culloden, I felt how life is rooted and nourished in death.
Our fear of death is understandable - the ultimate unknown - but it's detrimental and even destructive to the world that we want to live in.
Remember, death helps us focus on what is essential.
It brings a sense of enoughness and relational respect to what surrounds us. It widens our perspective instead of blocking our vision with a fundamentalist lack of creativity.
It's not morbid in a fearful way; it's to respect what it has to offer us: an understanding of what truly matters.
'Strong men', kingdoms, and empires will all fall, but they will all commit the same sin: strive to stop death and the end of their time.
They will white-knuckle it until many others will perish so that they can live on in a truly macabre dance. Just take a quick look around the so-called 'strong men' ruling many of the countries in the world that are causing so much pain to both those within and outside their frontiers (I think you know who I'm talking about here.)
These 'strong men' fear death.
Simplistically put, without the Black Death, there wouldn't have been the Renaissance—death and Rebirth, twin sisters to their younger sister, life.
Fairy Glen in the Isle of Skye - photo by Yours Truly.
Celestine Prophecy Moments
Before I moved from New York City to Portland (gosh!) 19 years ago, I read the then best-selling book, The Celestine Prophecy. One of the things that stood out to me from the book was the idea that even brief encounters with others, especially those that we feel compelled to engage in, often have something to offer us, often as an exchange of energy. I may be misinterpreting this, as I read the book many years ago, but I love the idea of the magic of encounters, even if they occur through what we may dismiss as small talk.
This pilgrimage was peppered with 'Celestine Prophecy moments' for me. I found talking to the locals filled with an ease that I hadn't realized I hadn't felt in a while. These last five years have been so egregious with all the political division that our collective psychic space is lathered in fear, anxiety, and a nervous touchiness where any small thing can easily be misconstrued, hampering any real dialogue.
It was a relief to feel, at least for two weeks, that in meeting others, albeit for a short time, I wasn't just having a financial or informational exchange; it was also a more pleasant and energetic one. This did wonders for my own psyche, a welcome relief. It made me realize how hungry I've been for social interactions to be easier and less charged by fear, anxiety, and the touchiness that pervades the collective psyche in this country.
In my second week of settling into my homecoming, more will be revealed as this pilgrimage unfurls. May it continue to nourish me for quite some time, as pilgrimages are wont to do.
Ease & Grace
Vanessa Couto
