This year, my husband and I and my teenage son are expecting to move from England to Scotland to a piece of land we own. (For those new to this website, we are originally from Australia.) The idea is to build our own home – a dream my husband has had for many, many years.
The dream of living permanently in Scotland has been with us ever since we were sent on relocation to Scotland back in our 20s. Everything else has been dreaming and waiting.
We have been living in England now since 2018 and we managed to buy some land in Scotland despite all the odds: prices rising, land going in seconds, Scotland closing its borders during the pandemic, living seven-plus hours away when land came on the market, and of course looking for that very specific piece of land we had always imagined. We know it was God who said long, long ago that Scotland was our home and he made a way when the time was right for the exact right plot to come up and for it to be given to us. Perhaps I shall tell you that story sometime. It’s quite extraordinary as most things involving God’s plans for us are.
Finally we have approval for the house we know we were meant to build – another ‘against the odds’ situation. And we are looking now at preparing the land for an onsite van. We had thought we might be up there in the next few months, but we realised that we need to wait for our garage and laundry to be built. Without that, we have no storage and no laundry and the nearest laundrette is about 40+ minutes away.
So it’s more delays and more waiting. Sitting this close to a twenty-year dream is its own special kind of agony. As is being between things, not quite belonging to one or the other. And it seems to reflect in my art at the moment. Our plot of land sits on a small rise and overlooks (when you clear the neighbour’s huge hedge) a peep of a loch and mountains upon mountains. So I seem to find myself painting and sketching lots and lots of distant views with mountains. At one point I journaled this:
It’s called “The Mind’s Eye” and of course it’s mountains and a valley and distance and the call of the north because that’s what’s constantly in my mind’s eye of late.
To help me escape the build-up of anticipation, I am living vicariously through other couples and individuals who have sold everything or risked everything to move to the house or land of their choice. Every book of late has been the same theme.
And so I painted this:
“Escape.”
It’s about escaping into books and the world within. But it’s also about those books being about escaping. And it’s also about dreaming of a cottage in the mountains. But is that all that’s happening? Are the birds at the top coming or going? Is the path at the bottom leading you to the house or from it?
Is it escaping from the shades of autumn and twilight into a brighter winter? Or from winter to autumn? From daylight to twilight? Or twilight to daylight? Is it that sometimes books seem like the brighter better place to be even when it’s describing a winter, while the reality is murky, difficult, and unclear? Or is it about wanting to escape from the books into real life, but that real life is unseen, murky, and not quite visible yet? There’s a suggestion of a landscape there, or distance, of a journey, of miles to explore, but the books and the escape into the wintry mountain landscape are the clearer, bigger things. Are the books a doorway? A distraction? A roadblock? The landscape within the books is bright, but it’s still winter. So is it an escape that isn’t quite ideal? A substitute perhaps? And is it about the idea of the adventures in books finding their way into real life, or maybe just longing to escape from the books into our minds?
I think, probably, it’s all of that. It’s working both ways and for that reason, it allows the viewer to decide which way they would go for their escape.
Which would you choose? And what do you see?
Book Recommendations
Here are some good books I have read of late or in the past about people who risk it all for their dream of a new life in a different land, or who risk it all for a property or house, a project, or even a new lifestyle. Maybe you can choose one and escape with me:
Driving over Lemons – Chris Stewart. A couple buy a dilapidated farm in Spain without any running water or electricity and a very tight budget. Though the locals think they are crazy, they think they have found home. It’s the stories and anecdotes of their years living and renovating in this remote valley. They are still there many decades later and just released an anniversary edition of this best-selling book. I am only a few chapters into this one and am enjoying it so far.
The Winds of Skilak – Annie Rose Ward. The book begins when the husband comes home from work one day and announces totally out of the blue, “I’ve sold the house!” This very young couple sell everything but the absolute basics that can fit in a trailer and move to a remote island in Alaska to build a log cabin from scratch and live off the land. I’ve read this a few times now. One of my favourites. A remarkable and exciting read from a very personable author. She’s the kind of person you wish you could meet one day and have a coffee with.
The Olive Farm – Carol Drinkwater. Actress Carol Drinkwater (who played James Herriot’s wife Helen in All Creatures Great and Small) falls for a new man and a run-down house in the south of France. They sink all of their savings into this place and that barely buys them the house. Now to renovate while juggling their careers, a new culture and for Carol, a new language. Will it pay off?
Island on the Edge – Ann Cholaw. I bought this one because our property name here in England is Soay and I wanted to know about my namesake: the Island of Soay in the Inner Hebrides. While researching this island and what life is like there, I discovered there was a whole book about a young single woman who moves to the remote, rugged and very tough island of Soay where people are scarce, there is no electricity or running water, and supplies come rarely when the seas are calm and they can get a boat across. She survived and thrived against the odds and still lives there to this day.
The Tenth Island – Ana Marcum and The Fallen Stones. The tenth Island is a wonderful, lighthearted story about a woman, a journalist looking for ‘something more’, finding her place on an island in the Azores. Later, she finds love with a good friend she left behind. A very engaging writer. And The Fallen Stones, a sequel of sorts, is set on a butterfly farm in Paraguay and is just as enchanting. Ana and her new partner (same guy from the first book), become fascinated by butterflies and this remarkable little butterfly farm that is surviving against the odds. I almost didn’t read it because I didn’t want Ana to change settings from the island in the first book, but I’m glad I read it. If anything, I might have liked it even more.
Humble by Nature – Kate Humble. British personality Kate Humble and her husband decide to save yet one more Welsh farm about to be divided up into smaller portions after an older farming couple can’t run it anymore. It’s interesting because the first part of the book is the hunt for a new house and farm in Wales when the couple decide they need to move out of London for a sea-change. It takes time and stamina to look for the right place and soon after they move in, and stretch their budget to the maximum, they hear about this farm nearby about to be sold and split up. They become intrigued and passionate about it in ways that surprise them. Sad that the farming heritage is just being turned into small lots, estates and hobby farms, they petition the council with some great ideas for saving the farm, and then sink all of their money into making it work. There are some triumphs, frustrations, successes, failures, and a whole lot of going into debt. It’s going all-in for a dream. But in the end, they have a remarkable working idea that benefits not just the farm, but the thousands who go to the farm every year to enjoy the work they have done.
The Hills of Tuscany: A new life in an old land – Ferenc Mate. One of my all-time favourites! I bought this on a whim years ago at a book sale, sat it aside, finally read it about ten years later during a time when I set a goal of reading books I wouldn’t normally read, and totally fell in love. I was captivated. Ferenc, Hungarian by heritage, is an exceptionally good writer – in fact he is a writer by profession – and he and his adventure-loving, no-nonsense French artist wife decide to move to Italy and buy a house. They don’t have the house yet but they’ll know it when they see it. A wonderful look at Tuscan culture, the food, the people, about the ups and downs of house hunting in foreign places and about finding yourself and who you were meant to be in a new land. He later wrote two more books and I very much loved the second book in the series as well. The third is quite a different kind of book, and though I enjoyed it, I don’t rank it as part of the series as it’s more about Tuscan wisdom and a culture that has been and gone than about his adventures in that land.
About the Author: Lisa Saul
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