Diana Gabaldon ruined me for Scotland.
At fifteen, I was working in a grimy costume shop in Albany, Oregon run by a crotchety, distantly Scottish woman called Marti. One day, after pulling twenty-five flappers for a community college production of
Anything Goes, I sat down to a lunch of microwaved fettucini and complained that I had forgotten my book. Marti, who hated complaining of any kind, threw something that I took at first for a brick toward my head. It was a dog-eared copy of
Outlander, the first book in the Gabaldon oeuvre.
Outlander is a story of a WWII nurse, Claire Beauchamp Randell, who, on an ill-fated honeymoon trip to the Scottish Highlands, accidentally walks through the cleft in a ring of standing stones and ends up in the 18th century. Sounds irresistable, I know. Claire's misadventures include forced marriage to a strapping red-headed warrior, fighting off wolves with her bare hands, and rescuing aforementioned husband from a buggering English Dragoon, the many-times-over great grandfather of her 20th century groom. Let me tell you - I fell in love with the characters, setting, and preposterous premise on contact, and to this day, it is my most closely guarded secret indulgence.
Gabaldon, who has written 7 books in the series so far, knits together landscape and legend in a way that pushes all of my buttons. She is, to her credit, an amazing constructor of character; James Alexander Malcolm Mackenzie Fraser is one of the most vibrant and intensely lovable characters I've ever read. But Gabaldon is no fool. A scientist by trade, I imagine she must have made the decision at some point, veering from literary fiction to genre with (almost admirable) deliberation. The sex is frequent, and really good. Bodices are unapologetically torn to shreds; women are sassy but vulnerable and conveniently gorgeous; story lines move wildly between royal courts to pirate ships to empty moors. Sigh. It's like crack.
So when we found out we were moving to Scotland, the lusty, knowing look in my eye was no surprise to people who really knew me. I imagined all sorts of things. Living in a crumbly crofter on the banks of Loch Ness. Visiting Culloden and walking wistfully through the heather. Making friends with local wifeys and collecting Scottish yarns that would one day make me famous. The reality, which I'm sure you can see coming, was a bit of a shock. I wanted rugged beauty and I got puked-on sidewalks. I was looking for coal fires and damp wool and I found cheap carpet and Primark.
The transition was hard. Very hard. There were a million cultural differences that I hadn't anticipated. For example, when in public, Scottish people like to pretend that all other people don't exist. They are hopelessly cheap, have terrible sidewalk etiquette, and lean a little too heavily on cologne in preference to regular bathing. A far cry from my imagined kilt-clad Highlanders who would, in my perfect world, run around playing bagpipes and wielding broad swords.
I don't know yet what I will take away from Scotland. And even though I know it hasn't been the romp in the heather I envisioned, there have been a few charming adventures. I'm pretty sure that it will only take ten minutes of being in the States for me to realize how much I loved it here, and to remember all of the Scots' good qualities. In the mean time, it feels a little better to put the blame for my discontent on the shoulders of Ms. Gabaldon.
After spending 2 years living on the rugged coast of Northeastern Scotland, a job now takes us to Fairbanks Alaska. Originally from Oregon, I am a writer, a mother, an aspiring frontier woman, a nostalgia junkie, and a book addict. I call myself a trailer wife, which refers to the state of a person (most often a woman) who is caught up in the professional trajectory of their spouse. This blog will chronicle my journey between two places I never, ever, imagined I'd call home.
