118. Transit

Celestial tundraAirports are such strange no man’s lands. Where else is sipping wine at 7am ordinary? Watching someone do just that, I imagined the attitude and motion repeating in airports all over the world just then in unintended but inexorable synchrony. Shortly after my residency at MacDowell, I left for a writing retreat at Moniack Mhor, Scotland’s National Writing Centre. I passed through Edinburgh on the way to this remote little sanctuary in the Scottish Highlands.Above The Royal Mile in Edinburgh.When I wasn’t reading or writing in the Centre’s “hobbit house,” I stared into the fire and walked 3 to 9 miles a day on the moors. It was another world.Also, there were lambs.By my last day, I was able to finish a small “Reader Writes” piece that I submitted to The Sun Magazine. The theme? “Returning.” View from my room at Moniack Mhor. The “hobbit house” in frame.After Scotland, London—a belated birthday gift to myself.Despite an unanticipated heat wave, I spent much time outside,…