Traveling Alone through Sheep Pictures

Three years ago, I picked the pumpkin spice latte of countries for my Study Abroad semester.

English speaking. Moderate climate. Bars and clubs. Large American expat population. Scotland.

But I don’t regret going there instead of Kenya or Thailand or some other ambitious cross-cultural destination. Going somewhere kinda boring pushed me to make it special.

I didn’t know many people and the ones that I did were satisfied soaking in the singular city (Edinburgh) where we’d landed. At the start, that felt limiting because I wanted to stretch my legs and get the most out of that special time.

Mostly by accident, I was pushed into the clear solution to my problem. I invited a girl to join me on a trip up North to the Highlands. We needed to board a 6:30AM train to get there. She texted me to cancel just a few minutes before it would disembark, leaving me standing on the platform at 6:29 with a choice.

But it wasn’t really a choice at all, the answer was obvious: go alone.

I did, and it was fantastic. I did the same thing most weekends after that. That winter, I climbed higher mountains and took more photographs than I ever had before.

Plenty of other really cool things happened. I made some great friends, I have some stupid crazy stories from nights on the town like any college student, and I read some great books.

But the big lesson, the one that I’ll tattoo on my ass when I come up with a pithy way to say it, is this: Make interesting life happen, and others will want to join. And if they can’t make the early train, go anyway and love your own company.

P.S. There are a lot of sheep in Scotland. In case you didn’t know.