Landscapes of Scotland and Ireland

By Mikaela Langley

The land was a patchwork quilt in every shade of green imaginable, stitched together by endless rows of hedges. Bald mountains that you can see all the way to the top, dotted with the white backs of sheep. Great lochs of unimaginable depth, stained by peat and keeping secrets in dark water. Flat bogs full of native grasses stretching out in all directions, beneath the surface are the shriveled leathery bodies of ancient beings. Culloden battlefield where if you didn’t know the history, you could not imagine that something so horrible and gruesome had happened in such a peaceful and serene place. Cairns of carefully placed stones, you could almost hear the old ones whispering through the walls. Quaint roadside villages filled with small plaster cottages taken over by their own gardens, more roses than house. Grand silhouettes of broken and battered castles on faraway hills, like broken jaws with jagged teeth cutting towards the grey of the sky. A twilight walk through a 200 year old cemetery, the towering gravestones strewn about with wildflower gardens to deter the idea that 60 feet of plague victims rest beneath your wandering feet. When it’s raining softly, and you drive through a small mountain pass and a cross appears from the mist on the side of the road. There is a dark hole in the rocks below it, a well that promises the water will relieve all that ails you. A glass for drinking sits in the crevice above the opening.