Scots Wha Hae

Well, it's been a few days, so I suppose it's high time to file my report on the Scotland trip.

As a reminder, I am the founder and editor of DargonZine, a magazine which prints the output from a collaborative writing project that is dedicated to creating a writers' community and inspiring and growing aspiring amateur writers. Founded in 1984, it is the longest-running electronic magazine on the Internet.

Each year, one of our writers hosts our annual Dargon Writers' Summit, a weekend of writing and socializing in the host's home town. Our previous Summits have all been in the US: Boston, Denver, Washington D.C., Chicago, New York, Pittsburgh, and San Jose. But this year we extended the Summit to a full nine days in order for Stuart Whitby to show eight of us around his entire nation: Scotland!

I'm not going to go into painstaking detail about the trip, but I did want to summarize it and make a few observances here.

But before I get into that, some other pointers. First, my personal site, OrnothLand, already has brief descriptions of what we did each day, with a handful of photos. Second, I'll be writing an exhaustive travelogue, which will be available in the near future. If you're interested in that, drop me a line at ornoth@rcn.com. But be warned: my weekend travelogues are usually about 30 pages, so this one might well wind up being as large as 90 pages of text! Finally, as soon as I can get the photos approved by the writers, a new 2002 Dargon Summit page will be available on the DargonZine Web site. Each of these will have a slightly different take on the trip.

For now, I'll just summarize. Six castles. Two cairns. Two ruined cathedrals. Watching our host jump off a cliff into a narrow, raging, freezing mountain cataract. Reading ghost stories beneath an alien orange full moon in a ruined castle on a cliff above the sea, the castle Bram Stoker's inspiration for writing "Dracula". Flying eagles, owls, falcons, and hawks at a falconry center. Wading alone into mist-shrouded Loch Ness. Drinking forbidden absynthe, the wormwood liqueur favored by 19th century writers. Scrambling to keep a grip on the edge of the world, a sheer 864-foot drop beneath me, as I climbed the face of Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh. Taking a distillery tour and drinking more beer and scotch whisky than wisdom would indicate. Seeing my own face staring back at me from a Pepsi can. Haggis; neeps and tatties; bangers and mash; Irn-Bru; and the omnipresent 80 shilling. Weather that alternated between sun and rain every 20 minutes, every day, without fail. A distillery pictured on the Scottish 10 pound note. BEUM! Deep Sea World, the Fisheries Museum, scenic Crail Harbour, and some fantastic go-karting (bruised myself heavily by driving so aggressively). Rhonda setting off the hotel fire alarm. Late night talks about relationships, family, and sex. Asking a young waitress to bring me "Vanilla ice cream, nude". The religious experience of the mountains. Rainbows everywhere, especailly Glencoe. Closing the 1000-mile circumnavigation of the country in Glasgow, with lots of sidewalk leering. Cutting 3 CD-ROMs with 2400 photos and video clips for everyone.

But what really mattered in all that? What really impacted me?

Let's start with the countryside: it was incredible. Mountains that leap up above you in piles of scree that defy the angle of repose, topped with unbelievable cliffs, punctuated with frequent streams of snow runoff that cascade down the face of the mountain in waterfalls, spilling into the inevitable valley river or loch in a speeding torrent. The endless, sumptuous green carpet of woods and farmland, punctuated by the unique bright yellows of alfalfa in the fields, gorse and forsythia on the slopes. The constant parade of picturesque and ancient bulidings: proud cathedrals, self-consciously conspicuous castles, long-abandoned farmhouses. But oh! the castles. The cold, passive strength of a granite wall. The understated grace of the entry arch and towers of a curtain wall. The sense of walking in the footsteps of Mary Queen of Scots, Edward I, Robert the Bruce, and Rob Roy MacGregor... Standing on an outer wall, hundreds of feet above the plain, sharing the feeling of power that the residents of those castles atop the crags must have felt. It was like wallowing in that sense of wonder that only a good fantasy story can evoke, and being for once truly a participant in those wonderful tales. The only words I can come up with to describe the land are 'wonder' and 'majesty'.

Ever since I was a child growing up in Maine, I've had a very close, spiritual affinity for the silent woods and the rocky crags. I wish that I'd been able to spend less time on this trip as the leader of a noisy group of tourists, so that I could spend a little more time to appreciate, to experience a spiritual connection with the amazing places that we visited. The closest I came was in our death-defying climb of Arthur's Seat. Despite being implausibly steep and a wonderful challenge to climb, it was a mere hillock in comparison to most of the amazing landscape we traversed, including the breathtaking Ben Nevis, more than five times the height of Arthur's Seat.

The other items of note all relate to my relationship with my companions: my writers. One of the surprises was that I received almost universal expressions of support for taking a more authoritarian role as editor. This has always been anathema to me, because I view consensus as the only way to instill a sense of ownership for the project in my writers, and as a requirement for delegating work to others. However, nearly everyone I spoke to balked, and suggested that I both rely less on others for useful work, as well as take more of the decisionmaking upon myself. I'm slowly allowing myself to be convinced, but it really is a major philosophical shift for me. I do think that this would integrate well with the board of directors structure that we are establishing, in that writers who feel a strong degree of ownership and want to have input can participate on the board, while other writers, who don't have the desire or time to do anything but write, can do that. The next step here will be figuring out how to present all that to the group so that it goes over, without sounding like me trodding on toes.

But more importantly than the feedback I got about the structure of the writing group were the relationships that we built. Over the course of ten days together, we formed an intense, very personal bond. We talked about our family histories and our childhoods; we talked about our growth as sexual beings and our relationships. For my part, I was comfortable enough to at least reveal to people my own two biggest insecurities, and was rewarded with several very touching and surprising responses. We offered one another compassion and understanding and a closeness that I'd never felt before. At times it approached a sort of sexual tension, but it wasn't dirty; it was more like an intimate closeness that was far more meaningful than anything physical.

In the end, I was truly amazed by the wonderful friendships that have about amongst this group. I'm really awestruck that almost two decades after I founded it, the community of writers that I created solely for my own benefit has produced such a strong, genuinely caring, close-knit group of people. They really are my family, and I'm honored that DargonZine, which I've always stated was my life's work, has brought these individuals together and not just helped them as writers, but also provided a cohesive, loving, supportive community for them.

The awesome landscape and impressive castles made Scotland a wonderful vacation and great research for a fantasy writer; but it was the people and the relationships we built that made it something magical. It's awesome to see that this trip worked so well on all those levels, and it still amazes me that I had some role in bringing it about.