by Signe Pike
It is a very sad fact that there is no good live music in Scotland. Well, at least not in Edinburgh. Or Glen Coe. Or on the Isle of Skye. We tried, Scotland, every night. We were there in high season. We gave you our best. You have stunning scenery, men who aren’t afraid to wear skirts, sexy accents, funny comedians, and a really sad music scene. At least for traditional music, that is. If you want to hear a cover band play hits from the 1970s, Scotland is the place to go. If not, buy a bottle of expensive Scotch and head to your rented room after dinner with your clock radio or a couple of CDs. I mention this not to play amateur music critic, but to prove a point. It was a testament, perhaps to the validity of all those who claimed to have heard faery music echoing at night through Scotland’s glens. It couldn’t have possibly been the natives.
The next morning we took the road that led to the Talisker distillery, then branched off toward Glenbrittle. After a couple of miles we passed a pine plantation, then dipped down to an open valley floor. Before us, the Cullin Mountains loomed dark and massive. A simple green sign to the right said “Fairy Pools.” We parked the car and headed out into a field, following a rushing stream that soon became a series of tumbling waterfalls with cold, crystal clear pools, passing quite a few hikers along the way. Were they, too, hoping to spot a faery?
Despite the crowd, there was something enchanted about these pools. It had been sunny and warm minutes before, but suddenly it grew markedly cooler and began to mist. As we climbed higher above the pools into the foothills of the Cullins, we began to feel the magic of the land. An old giant of a mountain towered ahead of us. Perhaps this was where the faery people retreated when the tourists came out to play. We couldn’t go up any farther without a map, so we had to turn back. If Mount Brandon was “dangerous,” the Cullins were downright deadly. On the way back down, all I could do was laugh when Eric made a real splash with the faeries, stripping down to his boxers and jumping off a ledge in the rock into the deepest of the pools.
It seemed to me that if there were faeries on Skye, they were taking quite a nap. I was attempting to follow KP’s advice and not expect something to happen everywhere I went, but come on! These places had these names for a reason, right? Or was this like trying to find the real Santa by visiting JCPenney’s Annual Christmas at the North Pole?
I’d heard nothing about Fairy Glen from anyone other than the curator at Dunvegan, so as Eric and I took the winding road up past the Uig Hotel, I didn’t know what to expect. Or how we would know when we arrived. It wasn’t in any of my tour books, and it didn’t appear on any map that we’d seen. But as we rounded a twist in the road, suddenly it ound us.
“Stop the car,” I said.
“I’d say we found it.”
One moment we’d been driving up a snaking, narrow road, and the next we were staring at faery land itself. Before us were clusters of bizarrely cone-shaped hills covered in green grass, with what looked like terracing or ridges running along their sides. A deep, dark pool of water lay at the base of the hills, clearly a loch. Everywhere were thick, gnarled thorn trees, covered in moss and sheltered by a soft carpet of fern. Never in my life had I seen any place so inherently . . . mystical.
Eric and I set off like two kids in a candy store, each in our own direction. I wandered where my feet wanted to lead, up the steepest of the hills. Every footstep into the enchanted realm brought me closer to a definitive conclusion. This was a sacred place, and always had been. There was something here, I could feel it. The short hill was so steep I almost had to claw my way up. At the top I reached a plateau. Behind me was a small field scattered with sheep, and at its end was a small cave too narrow to pass through. Looking out over the top of the crest, I was struck by the strange intimacy of my surroundings. It was so foreign, and yet it felt utterly familiar. I felt like if I closed my eyes, I could imagine that this was a noble village—or the site of a seriously ancient castle. I looked down as a black feather fluttered against my foot.
Right. Of course.
I sat there quietly, tuning in to the place. As I connected, I began to feel incredible sadness. It was inexplicable to feel a longing for a place that logically I had never been, but that was exactly what I felt. Everything here at Fairy Glen was present, sad, forgotten. But something reached out—something stronger than human memory. This place was special—it felt like a culmination of sorts, a source. I unzipped my pack and let my fingers move without stopping them. Out came some shells from the Aran Islands, a piece of beach glass from the Isle of Man, the rest of what I had left of the Glastonbury Thorn—a few flakes of bark. I slipped the little silver mermaid charm off my key ring and placed it gently on the ground next to the black feather.
All I could feel was loss. Something was lost here. I couldn’t control myself.
I began to cry.
“Sig!” Startled, I jerked my head up to spot Eric on a distant hill. “You’ve got to see this,” he shouted. “This place is amazing!”
I brushed away my tears, taking a moment to compose myself. What on earth had come over me? Taking one lingering look at the feather, now standing stiffly upright on the crest of the hill, I went to see what Eric was so thrilled about.
Below him lay a circular labyrinth made of stone. Man-made, clearly, and there was a group of people gathering before it, looking like they were ready to begin a meditation.
“Let’s just sit here until they’re through,” I whispered. “I don’t wanna disturb them.” They were a group of about eight middle-aged adults, and to my discerning eye, they looked like Glastonbury types, middle-aged and just a little bit woo-woo. These were my people! We sat and waited about twenty minutes, until they picked up their gear and some of them stood, gazing at the labyrinth. Two women in particular caught my eye. I approached them, heart swelling with kinship, hoping to strike up a conversation.
“Hello,” I said, giving them my most winning smile. “I couldn’t help but notice your group. Were you doing a guided meditation?”
The woman turned and looked at me for a moment, then turned her attention back to the hill in front of her. “Mmm” was her only response. Following her cue, the other woman did the same.
Jesus. I hated snobby pagans. I was here for the faeries, too! It was exactly this type of behavior that gives pagan people a bad reputation. I slinked back to Eric and he gave me an encouraging pat.
“You saw that, right?”
“Totally.”
“Hey, Eric.”
“What?”
“There’s something kooky about this place, isn’t there?”
“Yeah. I would definitely say so,” he said, looking around and scratching his head. “These aren’t just hills. It’s like there was something here before.”
“I know exactly what you mean.”
We could have stayed there all day. A thought crossed my mind: What would Fairy Glen be like at night? Probably a little scary. A little? Okay, a lot.
“Hey, Eric.”
“Yes?”
“Would you sit outside with me tonight and try to get in touch with some Scottish Highland faeries?”
He shrugged. “Sure.”
If we hadn’t already gotten engaged, I swear in that moment, in that magical glen, I would have gotten down on one knee and proposed.
That evening was our last in Skye, and we went out into the night with all the proper supplies. Warm clothes, a bottle of Scotch (you know, to keep away the chill), two bars of chocolate, and my head lamp. Going up into Fairy Glen at night felt disrespectful, so instead we drove into the countryside until we spotted a sweeping hill littered with tall green ferns and a place to pull over. I doled out my chocolate and Eric beat a path up the hill to explore. It was eight thirty and we figured we only had an hour until the sun set. I sang all the beautiful songs I could think of. I sat quietly. Eric came and went. I gazed out into the ferns, letting my eyes grow soft. There was no one else, just me, waiting. But still it wasn’t dark. It was, however, cold. Really cold. I zipped u
p my fleece and set my jaw. I wasn’t going anywhere.
At quarter to midnight, Eric came back up from the car, where he’d been sitting listening to music for the past hour. Blast these long summer daylight hours! Only now was it growing dark. We were both exhausted. He held out his hand, a look of sympathy on his face, and enveloped my cold fingers in his warm ones. I’d been at it nearly four hours.
Our last dinner together in Scotland was at an Italian restaurant in Edinburgh. We sprinted there in the pouring rain. We’d rented a hotel room for our last night and Eric was leaving at four a.m. Both rubbing sleep from our eyes, I watched as he gathered his belongings, my heart in my throat. He looked at me sadly for a moment, but when my lower lip began to tremble, he forced a small smile.
“We’ll be together again before you know it.”
I was trying really, really hard not to cry.
“Just a little less than three weeks,” I said, trying to be brave. “Thank you for everything. Thank you for coming here to be with me.”
He reached out and touched my cheek. “I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”
“I said it to a four-year-old, but now I really mean it. You were the best faery-hunting assistant ever.”
He chuckled. “You be safe.”
“I will. You be safe.” He leaned in for a kiss, and then he was gone.
I crawled back into bed despondent and lay there awake. At some point my eyes must have closed and I woke up and loneliness slammed me all over again. With no clear direction as to where to head next, I checked into a hostel and slipped into a three-day funk, just sitting at the computer trying to figure out where to spend my last days in Scotland. There were no signs this time. Apparently, I would have to decide on my own. One night I got drunk with a French girl named Clemance, who was tiny, birdlike, and tan, with a small silver stud piercing her bottom lip.
“It’s been really hard,” I slurred. “No one believes in faeries anymore.”
She looked at me like a kid who dropped her ice-cream cone.
“Sheet!” she exclaimed.
“I know,” I said. Sheet exactly. All of a sudden it hit me.
The signs had been there all along but I had been too afraid—too afraid I was going to be disappointed.
That’s when I knew: I was going to Findhorn.
23
The Faery Magic of Findhorn
The community has developed as a place where spiritual principles common to all religions, and with no doctrine or creed, are put into action in everyday life.
—FINDHORN FOUNDATION & COMMUNITY VISITOR GUIDE
I’D been avoiding Findhorn, an internationally famous experimental-living community, from the very beginning. Even if I hadn’t known it, I ignored it more staunchly after running into the unfriendly meditators beside the labyrinth at Fairy Glen: I had a particular intolerance for people who claimed to be spiritual and yet couldn’t be bothered to be kind to one another. Growing up in Ithaca I’d experienced my fair share of passive-aggressive spiritualists, too. Because of this—my continued lack of faith in humanity—I didn’t think a place like Findhorn could possibly be legit.
The community became famous in the 1960s when Peter and Eileen Caddy, along with their three children and their friend Dorothy Maclean, moved into a rented caravan in the Findhorn Bay Caravan Park in the north of Scotland. It was a depressed area that neighbored a Royal Air Force base, with nothing green to speak of—just nearby ocean and sand. Using compost, they created a garden to subsist on. It was while tending their vegetable garden that Dorothy realized she could communicate with the plants. She soon determined that she was in contact with the overarching intelligence of the plants, known as nature devas, who gave her directions on how to make the most of their tiny garden. (Devas are considered to be a species of being, if you will, within the faery kingdom.) From the sandy soil they began to grow fruits, vegetables, flowers, and legendary forty-pound cabbages. Soon people were flocking to Findhorn to commune with nature. What had been an infertile trailer park at the end of an airfield base began its transformation into the vibrant community it is today, a haven to thousands of visitors each year.
When I was in middle school, I had come across a book about Findhorn in the school library, and couldn’t believe it was actually marked nonfiction. A magical place with devas, faeries, and nature spirits and everyone can go there to live for free? Of course, that was the olden days.
On the bus to Inverness I watched the countryside roll by. Fields of barley and wheat, black-and-white cows awaiting their last march, chewing their cud as they gently sniffed the early morning air. There were white horses and rock quarries and sheep, of course, and the wild grasses on the side of the road were bursting with flowers the names of which my father taught me—Queen Anne’s lace, purple rocket, and the petals of the lady’s slipper that were beginning to wilt at last, scattering to the ground.
I felt a wash of relief to be headed back up into the Highlands. As I sat I reflected back on the pearls I’d collected from my journey. Alison in Hampstead: Learn to trust. Brian Froud: Rediscovering our belief results in a reawakening. Peter Knight: Choose love over fear. Charlotte on the Isle of Man: Follow your intuition; listen to your knowing.
But how could I put that all to use? If I was going to achieve what I set out to achieve, Findhorn was my last chance to find a way. I’d booked a room with a woman named Lini who lived in Findhorn Park, as it was called, right on the foundation grounds. Lini drove into town to pick me up, something no other B and B owner in the United Kingdom would ever have done. I liked her instantly. She was smart and sweet-tempered with ginger-colored hair and warm brown eyes. We talked easily as we drove alongside the ocean, finally coming through the gates and into the park. So this was Findhorn. I let my eyes soak it in. Everything was bursting with flowers! We passed the funky and cool-looking Phoenix General Store, driving on a small lane filled with houses, all looked to be eco-friendly and each one was unique. And when we reached the B and B, Lini offered to take me for a tour. “I’ve got nothing else to do,” she said with a smile. “I’d like to take a walk anyway.” As we strolled side by side, Lini pointed out the Findhorn meeting center, dubbed Universal Hall, with its tall, wooden doors carved with huge faerylike wings, the organic café, various meditation rooms and sanctuaries, and the barrel houses—little hobbit-looking houses at the edge of the woods, made from recycled whiskey barrels. Everything in Findhorn was sustainable. At last, we stopped for a moment, looking around. “This place was nothing but gorse and sand.” Lini shook her head as we looked out over the gardens. “Forty years ago this place was begun by a partnership with the nature devas. Of course, as time goes on, a community is going to grow and evolve. Stretch away from its roots. But you don’t have to dig very deep to find that all of that is still here, under the skin of things.”
She was right. Everything was done with thought, intention, and care. And the last stop on our tour was my favorite—the Boutique. A small shack with neatly ordered racks and shelves, the Boutique was Findhorn’s free store. People brought the items they no longer wanted—clothes, books, jewelry—and could take what they liked. After traveling all summer, it was like paradise. I left a sundress and picked out a beautiful skirt, handmade in Guatemala.
Back in my room, I saw that Lini had set up a table by the window for me to write. Stacked on it were no less than ten books she thought might be helpful in my search for the Findhorn faeries. I didn’t have the heart to tell her there was no way I could get through all of them; I was only staying for two days.
So I decided to stay for four.
It was a good thing I did, too, because the day after I had been planning on leaving, there was a talk and group meditation scheduled on trolls and gnomes. I hadn’t really given much thought to either trolls or gnomes since the Alux in Mexico—the former were scary, the latter wore pointed hats and lived in trees—but now I would get the chance. I spent the day walking the grounds, observing, and e
xploring all the way out to the Moray Firth, where a path through the sand led to the beach. The dunes were a fragile area and protected, so aside from the walking paths they were entirely wild. I walked along the beach as far as I could go. On the way back, as I reflected on the lack of faery presence in recent days, I gazed across the landscape. Gorse and prickly bushes grew in almost anything, here, in sand. But there were some pretty areas, too—pines and grassy slopes at the back of the dunes, between the Findhorn property and the beach. I was just about to head back onto the main path when I got a very distinct feeling. More of an order, really. And it was a voice in my head, though hard to explain, I had grown familiar with.
Go over there.
A voice or an impulse—I couldn’t really tell. But it was the same impulse that I had been listening to all summer.
Go over there! it insisted. I followed my directions over to a small, circular clearing, inaccessible from the pathway due to a thick hedge of prickly gorse and shrubs that encircled a ring of grass. Feeling silly, I stood there, looking into the hedges.
Okay. Now what? I thought, somewhat sarcastically.
Say hello.
Say hello? Say hello to who? This was crazy. This was what happened when I indulged my imagination. I started giving myself directions to do stupid things out of complete boredom, it must be.
Say hello. Introduce yourself.
Okay. Know what? Fine. I’ll do it. Because I am just that crazy. I am just a crazy faery lady in the middle of Scotland, and who cares anyway?
Hello, I said in my head, I’m Signe. I’m here because I’m researching a book on faeries. Any experiences that I’m granted I would love to be able to share with my readers. And my friends. And my future husband. And my family. All of whom are beginning to think I am certifiably insane.