Nostos (Greek: homecoming)

Liberation is my thing.  It’s a conundrum.  Sometimes freedom, sometimes loneliness.  That particular sweet freedom in coming home.  Ancient Greeks relished long poems about it, nostos.  Scottish fishwives purled sigils to invoke it in sweater patterns for their sweethearts.  Safe home, with full creels.  Each Island had its own pattern, symbol for home.  Dead or alive.  Returning safely home is big the world over.  The release of the journey’s hold.  Journey’s end.  Hopefully the wiser.

To magnify the freedom of driving home, I take a long cut overland, turning off the A90 to avoid Dundee.  Dundee, “Vestibule of the futile”, ten roundabouts of hell.  Exiting just after the bridge over the Tay at Perth, the road for Kinfauns.   It winds through rolling green farm country, hills and dales, single track roads, and between Beltane and Midsummer, it is splendid with Nature.  There are tunnels made by tree branches, draping green, shimmering in constant prayer.  The blueprint for cathedrals discernible.  Pink, white, yellow flowers on the verges and birdsong everywhere.  I open both windows and breath it all in.  Drone of bees, not engines.  Third gear, slow right down.  Occasional tractor.  Bleating of sheep and lambs.  A field of tiny pure white calves with their mothers.  Pagodas of yellow laburnum; every single part of them poisonous.  “All that glisters”. 

Exiting at Scone, turn right, the road towards Glamis.  Strathmore is an abundant glacial valley the Picts once settled.  Let me tell you something about the Picts, they knew good bountiful land when they saw it, and were creative, spiritual people.  Most of the Pictish stones have been gathered into a small museum in the village of Meigle.  The Museum is often closed when it’s supposed to be open.  I caught the attendant once, abandoning the ousted stones, to post a letter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valley_of_Strathmore