#scottishmoors

Just a bench somewhere in the moor #scottishcountryside #scottishmoors #lastdayof2017 #hogmanay2017 #whereiskezia (at Muthill)

Off to the Scottish Moors: Without a doubt I’ll try to get back to the March of the Lonach Highlanders, one of Scotland’s great Clan Gatherings. Mostly I like it because it’s such an outpouring of community spirit, with Highlanders who are spread far and wide in everyday life coming back together to recapture the community spirit, to make it happen again, if only for a day. Of course there are bagpipes and dancing, men tossing cabers like toothpicks and flinging hammers that arch across the Scottish sky before thumping heavily into the earth. But mostly there is a shared spirit of belonging to something very ancient and worth saving. I’ll never be one of them, of course, but it is heartening to see. @natgeo @natgeocreative #scotland #highlands #scottishmoors

Off to the Scottish Moors: The road from Bunnahabhain Distillery leads (obviously) to “other places.” Over the next two months I’m going to be looking for a lot of other places. Mostly I’ll be looking for those places in the Scottish Moors while on assignment for National Geographic. Right now I’m packing the last bits of kit and fretting over missing gadgets but that will come to an end in a couple of days when I board the plane for Edinburgh. From then on I’ll be touring the Highlands (and maybe islands) in search of the landscape, lore and legends of the Scottish Moors, what they mean to Scots and what they mean to the wider world. Moors get dim coverage usually, not the glory treatment of mountains and beaches, but we owe them a great debt for their subtle beauty — and the fact that they store whopping amounts of carbon and keep it out of the atmosphere. So join me on the journey. I know I’ll find some interesting bits of Scottishness along the way to share. @natgeo @natgeocreative #scotland #highlands #scottishmoors