As spring arrives I am in some ways still steeping in the intensity of last year: one of my busiest professional years yet, getting married in September and then spending a month overseas in Scotland on our honeymoon.

I’ve always found that travel is best processed in hindsight. All the experiences over the year, culminating in our travel in the fall, very much seem to have neatly encapsulated a transition point in my life. Perhaps a writing exercise for another time, or over this series of reflections, is my own ongoing embodiment of that transition. I haven’t quite found my language for it yet. I remember when I first tried on my wedding dress, there was a surprising feeling of not recognizing myself. Seeing instead who I was becoming, and what embodiment I was just stepping into.

That feeling continued as I moved through the year leading up to our wedding. In some ways I linked it to an initiation of sorts. To what, I’m not sure. There’s a level of maiden in many ways I stepped out of, but I don’t quite identify with the traditional “mother” phase heading towards crone in common spiritual language. What replaces mother in modern day life when “mothering” isn’t the calling?

Even now, as I work on my herbalism thesis (which I should be working on now, but when creativity calls, it calls), which focuses on integrative herbalism in the treatment of modern day cyclical health (women’s health); I am faced with that same question. For those of us who are consciously choosing to not have children, existing within a healthcare and wellness care system that hinge fertility as the deciding factor around health, much of the time, how do we support vitality while linking a woman’s value to more than just their ability to bear life into the world?

Around this same time, in the midst of wedding planning and facing all the micro transitions along the way to our wedding, we began to figure out where we wanted to travel to afterwards. Both G and I have always been interested in Scotland, and it was in with a few other options for our honeymoon. For me, Scotland has many ancestral ties. I knew whenever I did get there, there would be many explorations in real time as well as otherwise that would occur. In hindsight, it seems more and more appropriate that the energetic “homing beacon” began to chime in as this being where we headed to on our first trip as a married couple.

Our first stop on our trip was Edinburgh. It was a relatively short flight across the pond from Toronto, and after a brisk jog through the Toronto airport due to a delayed incoming flight – we settled into the overseas flight. As I tried to sleep, I was washed over with memories of my maternal grandparents. Specifically, the home of theirs that I spent lots of time at. Memories of summers spent in the back yard, with cousins, running through the garden. The feeling of running through the corn in the garden. Picking peas and carrots. The smell of their garage. I wondered if my grandparents had ever explored some of the territory I was about to explore. I had the sense they were along for the ride with me. Likewise with my paternal grandparents. What ancestral memories would I find, and what questions would I answer? I also had the sense that this was firmly my journey. I remember thinking, I am creating my own memories on the foundations of the past. Perhaps it was the half asleep and already sleep deprived vision taking hold, but as we approached EDI in the very early hours of the morning, it appeared to me that there were black dragons flying alongside our plane. Some guides for the journey ahead, perhaps.

We landed at 6:30am on Oct 17th. Our first orders of business were cappuccinos in an airport cafe while setting up our SIM in my phone and getting a handle on the bus system that we’d be using while in Edinburgh for a couple days. We took our first double decker bus from the airport to our BNB, which was just outside of the downtown area of EDI. Our hosts were gracious enough to let us move in that morning, the day of our check in, and even insisted on cooking us breakfast. Much appreciated way to start our first day. In a brave attempt to mitigate the worst of the time change, we had a strong intention to use the day to explore the city and stay awake. Which, we did indeed. Another bus, and 17,000 steps later we had seen much of Old Town on our first day. As we stepped off our bus into the city centre on Princes Street, facing the gardens with Edinburgh Castle looking down at us from the top of the city, it was one of a handful of experiences I’ve had of my breath being taken away completely.

Edinburgh is a very aesthetically pleasing city. Old town has been essentially the same for a few centuries now, and runs from the coast up the molten rock hill to peak with the castle at the highest point. New town has been essentially the same for the last couple centuries, and sits below Old Town. Remove the cars and street lights, and you could very easily be standing in the 1700 or 1800s. Though, a thought I had many times while we were in the city, the air quality may have been significantly worse back then. At one point, Edinburgh was considered Europe’s most population dense city. Multiple-story buildings were common in the 16^th century and by the 18^th century, buildings on High Street were often six to ten stories tall and could reach up to 14 stories towards the back where the land sloped down. The city was supplied with water via street level wells from the 16th century to the early 19th century, when slowly more modern plumbing became possible. Those living on higher floors (usually the wealthy), had to hire water caddies to trek water up the stairs until late 19th century. In 1797, the “Nastiness” Act was passed, which prohibited the tossing of waste out windows during daytime hours. Sanitation was a major issue in Old Town, along the Royal mile, until the late 19th century at least. Edinburgh would have been breathtaking for different reasons until very recent history.

We took in much of the Royal Mile on our first day, breaking in our travel legs well. We visited Greyfriar’s Kirk Graveyard (featuring many Harry Potter film graves, and much history) where G was shadowed by what seemed like a spirit dog. Perhap Greyfriar’s Bobby himself. We wandered up Victoria Street, the inspiration for Diagon Alley, popped into Napier’s, a herbal store that has been around since 1860, and then trekked back up the Royal Mile to the castle.

Along the way I found The Witch’s Fountain, tucked around the corner from the busy thoroughfare at the entrance to Edinburgh Castle. You have to know where to look to find this somewhat controversial monument, luckily I had done some research prior to our trip so I did know how to find it.

The Witch’s Fountain was created to remember the many women who were accused, tortured and convicted (commonly without fair trial), and publicaly executed for “witchcraft” – a label of convenience as we now know. The controversy behind this memorial is in the wording. The language on the plaque implies that the women being remembered were guilty, which as modern history shows, was never proven. The assumption that the women accused and forced to bear a horrible end to their lives, and the long history of persecution in other ways since, risks perpetuating harmful rhetoric. The debate, I suppose, is if remembering is still more valuable than forgetting.

By the end of our explorations on this first day, we were both nearly delirious from sleep deprivation. We somehow managed to find some fish and chips on our way back to our bnb, before hitting our bed pretty hard for a good night’s sleep.

On our second day, we woke up to a lovely view from our bedroom window of the mist rising up over Arthur’s Seat after a 12hr sleep. With our coherency restored, and a little in need of a break from the congestion of city central, we took the bus out to the coast and found Portobello Beach. We grabbed a couple flat whites at a beachside cafe, and walked the beach in low tide. I spent most of that time finding stones and shells in the sand. The whole vibe reminded me of a book from childhood, Kate’s Castle. Here I was creating a realtime adventure in a land full of history and adventure, little imagination needed. With some time to spare, we continued walking along the beach, before finding a bus to catch over to a nearby neighbourhood that housed the Royal Yacht Britannia. After finding it behind a paywall, we decided to carry on back to Old Town where we had a tour of the underground vaults to take in.

Edinburgh didn’t only grow upwards, it also expanded underground. Largely due to lack of real estate, underground bridges and vaults were created. At first for businesses such as taverns, cobblers and storage centres. This relatively quickly devolved into low-no income living situation and illegal business. The vaults are as you’d imagine, dark, cave like carve outs in the rock foundations of the city. We toured the South Bridge Vaults, completed in 1788. Rumours suggest that during the illegal use era you could find rebel distilleries, bodysnatchers storing their latest digs (steeling bodies from graves to sell to researchers was a common, and lucrative, practice in the 18th-19th centuries as medical research grew but religious institutions outlawed studies on cadavers), and many unfortunate families making home in small caverns. Ventilation would have been non-existent and air quality just as bad if not worse as above ground. By the 1860s the vaults were believed to be emptied, though they were not discovered until the 1980s during excavation for building updates above ground. Now they are largely tourist attractions.

To cap off our final day in EDI, we found a bite to eat in Old Town before making our way back to our BNB and preparing to leave the city the next morning.

As awestruck as I was at first in EDI, I left feeling ready to leave. I was struck by what would have frankly been a horrible place to live historically, as magical as it seems today. Perhaps that lived experience was a past life experience I’ve had, as I couldn’t seem to separate the past from the present. As I began to steep myself in the history of my bloodlines, the idea of being faced with leaving rural settlements as the elite cleared space for sheep and given the option of city centres like EDI or getting on a ship, it was an interesting reflection as to what would be more appealing. Edinburgh is full of history, a centre of amazing scientific and medical progress, the inspiration for much creative works and novel thinking – and yet, I sensed so much turmoil, congestion and heaviness in the air still. I’m glad we went, and I was glad to turn our gaze towards route out.

More to come.