Scotland…How I’ve Missed You – Santana Mosher

If you had told me a few years ago that I would be going to Scotland to take a play to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, I think I would have laughed hysterically. If you knew my high school self, you would know that I would have never imagined myself doing that. Then, two years ago, I surprised myself by traveling out of the country for the first time to do exactly that. Crazy, right?! I am so grateful to have had the experience of participating in this program with Pepperdine during my first year of college. If you then would have said, “Oh, but just wait, you’ll be going back to Scotland”, I wouldn’t have believed you. Now, I’m back in this country that I love, getting ready to go into my senior year of college, and I still find myself in disbelief. I had no idea that Scotland was going to become such a special place for me. Now being here and doing this program again a couple of years later with a new play and a new company of wonderful people, I can’t help but look back. I look back on myself those two fateful summers ago (haha), and remember how much this trip has changed me. How much it is continuing to change me.

Recently, I was asked how it feels to be back in Scotland. I’ll be honest, at first I struggled with the answer. Partially because I didn’t want to be “that person”. The one who compared everything to the past and inserted their experience when maybe it wasn’t wanted. My first time on this trip was one of the best experiences of my life, but I wanted to be present in this experience with these new friends I’m making. I wanted to be grounded in the person I am now instead of who I was then. I love that nineteen-year-old version of myself, but I’ve lived a little bit of life since then. I also struggled at first because coming back to this place that I love so dearly…it is a feeling that is so big I didn’t know how to fully capture it. But, I’ll try to do my best to do it here.

The best way I know how to express it is this: it’s a kind of joy that makes you feel like you can embrace the whole sky. It’s that feeling of when you’re in the airport coming back from a long trip, and you see that one person that means more than life to you. You run to them at full speed, embracing them with everything you have because you can’t imagine how you haven’t been able to hold them for so long. It’s a feeling of being wrapped in a blanket, the kind that’s like a second skin because you know how it smells and the texture is full of memory. It’s a feeling of thinking about a song that constantly plays in the back of your mind, and suddenly you find yourself at the Glenelg Inn and someone takes one of the many guitars off the walls and starts playing it. You didn’t know how much you missed that song until a whole village is singing it with you. Sometimes it also feels like a battle with your memory. Odd little moments of deja vu happen, and then you remember how differently something looked to you back then versus now. It’s scary and yet wonderful.

Anytime someone asks me where my favorite place in the world is, I always say Glenelg. And now, having just spent a week there, it makes my heart happy to say that that answer still won’t change for me. I was anxious the whole drive from the airport to the Highlands, waiting for those green hills and to see the beautiful people of this community again. The moment we drove up the road to Five Mountains of Kintail, I immediately had tears in my eyes. It was this relief in knowing that I finally came back to this place where I felt like I could breathe. The place that I remember made me feel alive for the first time. Continuing up the road around the bend of the trees, the glen fully opened up before us. Lush, green, and vast. I felt like laughing and crying at the same time. I couldn’t believe it, I was finally back! Cami did not exaggerate how gorgeous that view is. It was breathtaking. 

That whole week we visited places both familiar and completely new to me. The warmth of Balcraggie, seeing Donna and Eddie again, the stunning beauty of Skye, and these lovely people who shared their stories and history with us flooded me with the warmest sensation. Seeing faces I had met two years ago, and the joy I had when they remembered me made me feel like I was flying. Eddie’s stories in particular moved me this time around. I always loved his stories, but this time they sank into my skin more. They became little pieces of this land that I wanted to fully remember and keep close to me. I love how rooted Scotland is in its storytelling. But there was room for so many new and exciting things to happen. Seeing the wonder on my friends’ faces as they were seeing all this beauty for the first time was so heartwarming and made me so appreciative of how deeply this place moves people. The Skye Ferry was also a new adventure for me and there were so many new places to explore on Skye! 

We hosted a Ceilidh and this time I was the hostess! I think my nineteen-year-old self would have laughed at this too. But it is moments like this, looking back on that girl who never saw herself doing something like that, and how happy and free it made me, that I realize that I’ve grown. I’m surprising myself with new experiences and relearning stories I was worried I had forgotten. More than anything, I look back and I see that it was the sense of unity that we all had, not just within our company, but with this village people that moved me beyond words.

“Santana, how do you feel being back in Scotland,” you ask? 

I’m present, I’m alive, and (as a dear Highland friend once said) I feel tickety-boo!

By: Santana Mosher

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2024-Blog

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