this little blurb, my attempt to summarize my time in scotland in so few words, has been exceptionally hard to write. i read through my last few journals to see if maybe the words i was searching for were already written down somewhere, and in doing so i came across a pattern. 

my relationship with st andrews has been an ambiguous one. in four years it has been both the place i run from and the place i run back to, and i feel infinitely lucky to have felt both sides of this spectrum so completely. it is an environment that forces you to turn inwards, and it was this turn that brought my relationship from the former to the latter. this is a dramatic oversimplification, but the point here is not my changing relationship with this environment, but rather my somehow unwavering gratitude for the place itself throughout much, well, wavering. looking back through past writing, i realize that documenting the beauty of my surroundings was the constant— at times an escape, at other times, an indulgent way to spend a happy afternoon, but always a part of my days. it makes me smile now, to see that no matter the internal battle, the wonder always remained. in march of 2022 (a time my mind often chooses to skip over), one journal entry in particular stands out to me now:

the sun came out and the whole town decided to have a good day. we had been waiting all week you see. day after day of overcast left us feeling uninspired, some days going outside only out of necessity, forgetting it can be something done too for enjoyment. but this morning. we each opened our blinds to the crisp bright morning air, a sight that drew a smile out of each of our tired faces. the market stands were assembled, the musicians took to the streets, the cheese shop gave back to the good weather by offering up freshly made cheese toasties for those walking by. the sidewalks were packed but how could it spark any irritation, being stuck in a crowd or behind a slow walker? just look at the sky! the beautiful blanket of blue that covered us all reminded us on this day that it will be alright. it urged us to enjoy. to bask. to appreciate it all, even the foottraffic. each person you passed was, after all, there for the same reason you were. today we walked for pleasure. it all feels incredibly simple, and you find yourself wondering why you don’t appreciate this lovely little town more often.

and in january of 2023, 24 hours into my return to st andrews after seven months away, carrying with me the worry that my current self wouldn’t stand a chance against the ghosts i had left behind, i wrote,

i had no idea how much i missed this place until i just walked around. i didn’t think i missed it at all. but then i saw the 3pm light hit my window like it does every day before the sun sets, my old reminder to go for a walk along the water. and then i saw my favorite views again. the beauty of this town is magnetic and translates into some kind of internal peace and appreciation that i can’t fully describe and that i don’t feel anywhere else. i walked around, laughing to myself, ‘i can’t believe i live here. i can’t believe i live here.’ it feels extremely weird but overwhelmingly incredible to say that right now i’m feeling an excitement i longed to feel all of last year. i stopped in the bookshop on my way home to tell the woman at the counter that i live next door and that coming back from being away and seeing that the new part of their shop had finally opened made my day. it did. when i left last spring it was a locked up empty space, full of dust and dark corners, and now it’s the newest addition to my favorite shop in town, full of warm light and newly sanded hardwood floors and the glorious smell of new books. i can’t help but feel the parallels.

and now, something i wrote 16 months later, to my friend julija about the song johanna’s dream, a few days before my last ever exam:

…the first exam is in, and now you have time to recover. you don’t have to start prepping for the next one for a few more days, so you’ve been spending your time reading, journaling, eating, dreaming about the many trips to come. you are currently lying in a hammock tied between two ivy-covered trees at the top of sam’s backyard. it is 3:45, and the sky is so blue that you find yourself quietly, joyfully, laughing about the colors this world can produce. the birds are keeping you company, their voices crisp and clear in your ears, uninterrupted by the sounds of cars and passersby from this high up off the road. this song comes on. you smile immediately. an eyes closed, wide grin kind of smile. you think about how soon you’ll be under the spanish sun again. you picture this song coming on over the speaker in the van: it’s the early morning, you’ve all just woken up, there’s a pot of coffee on, and the first swim of the day is just a few minutes away. the world is beautifully, wonderfully, simply, here. you open your eyes again and are brought back to your flower-filled haven, and your smile lasts you the rest of the day.

i remember so clearly writing about the sky on this day. and now, i realize i’ve spent four years writing about my surroundings, the inspiration endless and the bursts of awe always surprising me from new corners of town. only in scotland do overcast skies bring out the vibrant colors of the land even more than the sun. i think back to bus rides in the rain, being driven down winding roads at blurring speeds, racing by fields that push the boundaries of the color green. in moments of need, it was the green fields that brought me to a place of internal calm. and in my final, wonderful year in st andrews, in the flat with the third-story window that saw right over town and into the roaming hills beyond, the green fields were with me, always.

i’m reminded of one of my favorite passages from italo calvino’s mr palomar. in one story, he writes of mr. palomar’s terrace, “a secret island above the rooftops,” whose annoyance of the pigeons that keep him company leads to a broader appreciation for the separation between life above and below the ceiling of the city he finds himself in. it is a divide between two worlds: the city on the ground, and the city whose ground is not the pavement but the sweeping collection of roofs overhead. calvino writes, “he tries to conceive the world as it is seen by birds. […] their gaze, like his, wherever it turns, encounters nothing but roofs, higher or lower, constructions more or less elevated but so thick that he can move only so far down. that, down below, hemmed in, streets and squares exist, that the true ground is the one at ground level, he knows on the basis of other experiences; at this moment, from what he can see from up here, he would never suspect it.”

he goes on to describe all that he sees from his view on the terrace, the “rise and fall of roofs, old tiles and new, curved and flat, slender or squat chimneys.” from my window, add the scaffolding holding up 15th century architecture, the bell towers of the many churches in town that chime on the hour, the windows that reflect the sky by day and magnify the various shades of warm light that came from within by night, and all of the crows, and the seagulls, and their favorite resting places.

st andrews is a bubble. this fact is well known. it is, after all, a fully functioning university community in a very small town that is equal parts fishing village and golf destination. its vacuum-like nature is compounded by its scenic neighbors: on one side is the north sea, and on the other, the rolling hills. an aeriel view of st andrews offers the undeniably calming scene of a little sphere of civilization surrounded completely by deep blues and expansive greens, broken up only by the four main roads that bring people in and out of town. this feeling of existing inside a place that quickly and without your realizing becomes your whole world was countered, for me, by my daily visual reminder of life outside the town’s borders. rise just three stories up and you are grounded once more in your smallness, the hills facing you granting you the very obvious perspective that is very frequently forgotten. as calvino writes of the view from mr. palomar’s terrace, “nothing of this can be seen by one who moves on his feet or his wheels over the city pavements. and, inversely, up here you have the impression that the true crust of the earth is this, uneven but compact, even if furrowed by gaps whose depth cannot be known […] it never even occurs to you to wonder what is hidden in their depth, because the panorama of the surface is already so vast and rich and various that it more than suffices to saturate the mind with information and meanings.” i smile now, thinking about the continual support of my surroundings, their commitment to offering me a mind saturated by the beauty around me, the vastness and richness and variousness of which more than sufficed. this third-story window was undoubtedly my favorite corner of town, a front row seat to the beauty beyond. and now, here i am in the beyond, the world outside of and after st andrews, and i remind myself that though i long for my old window seat, those four main roads will always be there to guide me back.