Bones in the Soil.

That this place exists in the world, it is good for my heart to know.

I must admit, I was afraid to come to Scotland. This land of my ancestors has called my name for as long as I can remember. As a young woman, before I knew my heritage, I would answer when asked, “Where would you most like to travel?” that there was only one place I desired to go.

I have never suffered wanderlust. I became a mother when I was nineteen years old, and in the following decade, I gave my first son four younger brothers. I tied myself thoroughly to my home, and I did not resent it. I planted gardens and acquired dairy animals. I built a life that is best not left behind for long. Beyond obligation, there is also my preference. Of all the beautiful places I have seen, my favorite place to go has always been my own table, my own garden, my own bed.

When Miah told me he felt that I should take this journey, I argued. The time, the money, all the reasons, all the excuses to stay in my comfort zone rose. But then he told me he felt it strongly, he knew it in his knower. He doesn’t say that sort of thing lightly, and I’ve learned over the years to trust him.

So, we booked the tour. I packed the bag. I got on the plane.

The moment we descended through the clouds and I saw Scotland for the first time, tears streamed down my cheeks. I was awestruck by the beauty of it all, the history, the story it tells.

I texted Miah this morning, as we traveled through the ever-changing landscape by both bus and ferry, “I feel that when I imagine my inner world, it looks like Scotland.” It is as if I have been here before in my mind, and when I’ve seen it there, I thought I was seeing heaven.

Though my reluctance to come was primarily due to my homebody nature, part of me feared I might be wooed to the point of my own ruin. What if I loved it too much? What if it caused a deep discontent in me? What if it made me desire to uproot my life and my children’s, surely wrecking hearts along the way? Wouldn’t it be better never to know than to live with that kind of longing?

Reluctant traveler as I am, I am also chronically wooed. The fall colors of Vermont, the white sand beaches of Florida, the vastness of the Grand Canyon, the holy redwood forest of California, even the endless swaths of desert in Arizona, they have all moved my heart. But I knew, and I have always known, Scotland would be different. She has been.

This has been a visceral wooing, a fearful and fierce leaping in my middle.

A few years ago, after sharing at a homesteading conference, a man approached me with a question. “You speak a lot of legacy. Have you ever researched your ancestry? Legacy runs both ways, you know.”

I hadn’t. Aside from the stories I’d been told by parents and grandparents, I knew very little of my people and my own history. That night, a notification pinged my phone, an email containing a gift subscription to ancestry.com. The man blessed me with an invitation and an open door. I had no more excuses not to know my story.

It took me months to do the research. We returned from that conference and found ourselves in the shocking position of holding a funeral for my mother-in-law. Grief came like a train, and we had no choice but to board. But as winter passed and the garden died, the fog of grief began to thin a bit, and I fell down the wormhole of the past. What I learned shocked me.

We were, at that time, planning to relocate from Arkansas to South Carolina. It was another one of those know-in-your-knower things. We had no logical argument for the move. We just knew it was our path. My ancestry revealed that many of my four- and five-times great grandparents had lived within miles of where we were planning to move. Some were buried there. I discovered that many of my people had come from Scotland by way of South Carolina. This struck me as significant, given our draw to Carolina and my lifelong fascination with Scotland.

Move, we did. We wrecked all our plans and packed our life and farm onto trailers. Seven hundred twelve miles across the American South felt like a huge leap, and when we landed, I had never felt more at home.

You must see, then, why Scotland terrified me. To open my hands and know, this has happened before. I have felt the pull of bones in the soil before. I have upset a carefully tended life to follow a quiet mystery, and I know myself well. I would do it again, no matter the cost.

I feel them here, the people that went before me. I found the church where my seven-times great grandparents were married. It still stands, and I will see it next week. I have felt such a holy upheaval in myself, I still haven’t quite found the words to describe it. Yet my fears were unwarranted. Rather than pull me here, this line of my blood that runs in this soil has settled something in me.

I know so little about them, my people who lived in this land. I know their names, the dates of their births and deaths, with only the records of marriages and babies in between. They were all common people, I suppose, so the records of their lives are few. Yet for a handful of them, there is one thing that stands out as extraordinary. Their birthplace is listed as Scotland. The place of their burial is America.

Because of them, I speak with a Southern drawl. Because they felt a pull in their knower, they boarded a boat and wrecked their lives to follow their own path.

When I consider my life, my sweet little homebody life, with five sons who bear my features, and gardens that tie me to the land I love, I imagine I am doing exactly what they dreamed of for their children’s children.

Scotland will always be sacred to me. Though I am just meeting her, I feel as if I’ve known her all along. The knowledge that this place, full of my roots, exists across the sea will be carried with me. I will bring my sons here to pay homage to our heritage. But again and again, I will go home to Carolina, just as my people did. All of me will return there. My whole heart will land at my table, in my garden, and in my bed, in the home my ancestors chose to plant their seeds. Yet I am certain of this: I will land with a knowledge I crossed the world to learn. I love legacy, and I have spent much of my life praying to build one. Here, however, I have come to cherish this truth: I am a legacy too.

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