{"id":21719,"date":"2009-12-08T07:30:58","date_gmt":"2009-12-08T14:30:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/travelswithmiranda.uskeba.ca\/?p=3454"},"modified":"2016-09-12T19:34:03","modified_gmt":"2016-09-12T16:34:03","slug":"travels-without-miranda-10-melrose-scotland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/travels-without-miranda-10-melrose-scotland\/","title":{"rendered":"Travels Without Miranda, #10: Melrose, Scotland"},"content":{"rendered":"

My month’s journey backpacking around Scotland taught me that there is no reason why I can’t have something I really, really want. I woke up one November morning in 1997 and announced that I was going to Scotland the following summer. I spent six months saving up, and even losing a month’s income to the Ice Storm of ’98 didn’t deter me from my goal.<\/p>\n

The most amazing month of my life was drawing to a close when I landed at the youth hostel in Melrose. It was a grand old Victorian house, but it was for the abbey I had come. My month had been one of following the steps of Scotland’s hero William Wallace<\/a> and one of her kings, Robert the Bruce<\/a>, and it was at Melrose Abbey that Bruce’s heart was buried.<\/p>\n

\"Melrose

Melrose youth hostel<\/p><\/div>\n

There wasn’t much left to my trip, just a few days. I was due back at work in a week. I was heartsick to be giving up my travels, but excited that my life was about to begin. I was starting university in the fall and would move out on my own, events that made it a little easier to say goodbye to Scotland.<\/p>\n

My last night in Melrose I sat on a bench watching the sunset behind the abbey ruins. It is one of those moments of my life that I remember with shattering clarity. It was a perfect moment in time when I knew that I was at the right place and that everything in my life was exactly as it should be. I was flooded with a feeling of peace and well-being and rose from that bench clearheaded and ready to face whatever the future had in stock for me.<\/p>\n

\"Melrose

Melrose Abbey. The Bench would be just offshot to the right.<\/p><\/div>\n

It didn’t take long after that for my life to completely derail and I ended up spending the better part of a decade grasping for that perfect moment again.<\/p>\n

While I’ve never had such a strong feeling of contentment since hitting the road with Miranda, I’ve had several glimpses of that peace I felt in Melrose. With that reference point in mind, I have been able to identify moments that are completely the opposite, when the universe is shouting at me to get out, to move on, that where I am is the wrongest place I can be. I haven’t shared the full story of what went on in Oliver, but I think that what I didn’t say in my announcement that I was leaving<\/a> was pretty clear.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My month’s journey backpacking around Scotland taught me that there is no reason why I can’t have something I really, really want. I woke up one November morning in 1997 and announced that I was going to Scotland the following summer. I spent six months saving up, and even losing a month’s income to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1442,632,636,701,635,1276,5,18,3,56],"tags":[792],"class_list":["post-21719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britishcolumbia","category-canada","category-europe","category-melrose","category-north-america","category-oliver-bc","category-rving","category-scotland","category-travel","category-uk","tag-religious-sitescemeteries"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21719\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}