PLACES IN THE HEART

As a travel writer, I am occasionally asked to name my favorite foreign destination, the place to which I'd most like to return. Though the question usually entails some qualification, in general, my answer for the last 30 years has been Scotland.  My affection, it must be said, is rooted neither in family lineage nor frequent experience with that quaint, quirky, beautiful and increasingly independent nation that occupies the northern half of Great Britain's primary island. Almost 30 years ago and while still in college, I had the good fortune to stumble across a series of unique people and offbeat adventures along the scenic shores of Loch Ness.

Following six weeks of a summer internship in Munich, Germany, I found myself hitchhiking alone and rather aimlessly through the Scottish Highlands. The motorist who picked me up near the city of Inverness suggested that we stop at a place called Achnahanet, the site of a motley group of green trailers parked in a lay-by along the shores of Loch Ness. Why not?  It was the headquarters of the Loch Ness Investigation Bureau, an unofficial collection of amateurs devoted to the question of whether or not that long, deep lake harbored a mysterious creature. Looking around the decrepit trailer containing displays about the investigation, I found the notion of monster hunting exotic and fascinating. When my ride got back in his car and moved on a half-hour later, I stayed - for three weeks, as it turned out.  During those days, I spent long hours standing sentry duty on the top of a van parked at a roadside vantage point, manning a Areflex movie camera, searching the loch's surface with binoculars, waiting for Nessie to make a filmable appearance, or an appearance of any kind.  Free time was spent exploring the environs in and around the tiny lochside village of Drumnadrochit with the assorted locals and characters associated with the investigation. Often, in the evening, we'd find ourselves on the ruined walls of Urquhart Castle on a rocky pinnacle overlooking the loch, drinking beer, shooing away the sheep who wandered by and scheming long into the night about ways to get the goods on Nessie.  I had such a wonderful time that after I graduated from college the following May, I wound up going back to Scotland and Loch Ness, where I spent the better part of another summer on its steep shores amid the blooming heather, drinking up Scottish life and lore, seeing scenery, searching for that in which most folks don't believe, even if secretly they'd like to be surprised.  The whole Loch Ness experience was a magical time and place, which, as a result of relationships that began there, ended up having a substantial impact on the course of my life since then. For years afterward, my best dreams had Loch Ness settings.  Yet, as is usually the case with life, the magic eventually ends, people change, and life moves on to other things. And although I have traveled quite a bit in the decades since then, none of my journeys took me back to Scotland, even as the passing years polished my memories of that time and place.  So it was with considerable anticipation that last May I found myself driving a sporty little Land Rover with my wife along the tree-lined, two-laned A82 north through the Great Glen toward Loch Ness. I felt anticipation and some anxiety because in 30 years, I've learned that, just as people and times change, so do places. Destinations which we hold dear often have a way of being changed by memory and time.  Although I'd followed the occasional media reports of subsequent (and often high-profile) efforts to trace the elusive animal, I had maintained no contact with any of the people from that time. I was fairly certain none of my cronies from that time were still in residence, and a look at the area's thin phone book provided some confirmation of that fact.  As we drove along the twisting road, past the lochside villages of Fort Augustus and Invermorriston, memories came flooding back, with every bend and blind curve revealing another glimpse of the loch. I was pleased to discover that little about the loch had changed; the landscape of steep, wooded slopes plunging right into deep, dark waters is timeless, and there seemed to be few signs of human development other than occasional logging swaths.  As we neared Drumnadrochit, I tried to spot the lay-by where the investigation bureau trailers had been parked, but it was gone, returned to the grazing of sheep.  My next surprise was Urquhart Castle. Thirty years ago, the ruins had been a pile of stone surrounded by sheep. Now it was a National Historic Site, complete with a huge parking lot, admissions charge and kilted bagpiper playing on the parapets. Neat paths now laced around and through the ruins, providing access to and information about the castle's turrets and tunnels, places we'd been able to look at longingly so long before. They even had a trebuchet set up outside the walls to demonstrate how great siege engines of the past had worked. Although the changes clearly made the castle a more accessible destination in many ways, for me its romanticism had faded.  There was even a gift shop in the courtyard, with a selection of castle keepsakes (though nothing of Nessie). The clerk inside had little patience with an old LNI member. "We get one or two of you in here each summer," he said. So much for nostalgia.  Drumnadrochit has been transformed by the 250,000 visitors who now stream through each summer to try to get a glimpse of Nessie. Though it had other charms to offer, the town seems to have given itself over to the pursuit of monsters. The old Glen Urquhart Lodge, the hotel with the pub in which we spent many evenings (and had weekly baths), is now the "Original Loch Ness Monster Exhibition," basically a gift shop with a tacky audio-visual displays. There's also a competing "Official Loch Ness Monster Exhibition," which has more useful information about Nessie and the efforts to find her. I wouldn't have been surprised to see Nessie herself, though she'd probably be standing in the parking lot, wearing a kilt and hawking three-humped souvenirs.  The line of tour buses waiting to get into the parking lot dissuaded us from trying to find a quiet lunch in Drumnadrochit. Instead, we headed west up the A831, a route which in all my time at Loch Ness I'd never explored. Hitchhiking and bumming rides is never an efficient way to get around back country roads.  As it turned out, good fortune brought us to nearby Glen Affric, which, we quickly learned, has a well-justified reputation as one of the Highland's most beautiful and untraveled glens, with fairyland waterfalls. The Tomich Hotel, a truly charming, low-key establishment, provided a perfect lunch, and our hostess gave us directions to the eerie ruins of Guisachan House. The century-old estate of Lord Aberdeen, whose fortunes shifted to Canada, was a total ruin, but the living relics of the estate's elaborate grounds offered evidence of its former greatness. And a secret path up a narrow glen overgrown with giant rhododendron led to a stupendous waterfall not found in any guidebook. It was a sublime discovery my wife and I will always share.  Sometimes, when we go looking for the past, we find what we're searching for. Sometimes we don't. Either way, the reward is well worth the effort, the personal discovery the essence of the exercise.


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