There's magic all around us

Something about authors that's a given - we all have a vivid imagination. 

I was having a conversation with someone the other day about the magic in the world around us. I'm not talking about hocus pocus this time, I'm talking about beauty and history and those unique things that make us stop to ooh and ahh. What is the aurora borealis if not magic? 

And this is where the conversation takes a turn. The scientifically minded among us will argue that it's a scientific phenomenon (the aurora) and there's nothing magic about it. While technically true, it comes down to the way we see things. I'm sure there's a neurological description for our varied responses to the same stimuli, and even those with "less" imagination can still be impressed with the view.

One of the things authors have struggled with during the past two years is the lack of "magic" stimuli. In its place is a daily diatribe of people attacking one another's differences, their uniqueness, their viewpoints and belief systems. Even the way they look. It's exhausting for people who want to show the world the magic we see in these same things. The magic is under attack. During these times, sometimes it's easy to forget the magic is still there.

Which brings me back to the conversation in question.

We got to talking about work trips and I commented on how those trips must have impacted this person, but no... they didn't really find them remarkable (which I find interesting, since they chose to talk about them in the first place!). And then I mentioned a trip I'd taken several years ago chasing the magic.

The Birks of Aberfeldy

I'm sure many of you have read or watched the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon, about an army nurse from the 50's who happens upon a stone circle and finds herself transported 200 years into the past. The books so captivated me that I went to Scotland in search of an escape from the real world. No, I didn't want to end up in Jacobite Scotland, but I did go in search of the elusive something different. And I found it. For four days, I actively searched out those things that called to me through Ms. Gabaldon's writing (for the record, there is no such place as Craig na Dun). What did I find? An old-time village that might have been straight out of Brigadoon (except it didn't disappear at the end of the day). An unexpected nature walk across the street from the inn I stayed my first night, dedicated to Robert Burns. The River Ness - complete with the ruins of Urquhart Castle and tales of the Loch Ness monster. The haunted feel of Culloden Moor. A stone circle (very small) and burial cairns near the moor. An inn in Inverness made up of several buildings that interconnected with hallways that seemed to lead nowhere and staircases up and down where you could easily lose your way. A gondola ride up Ben Nevis (the tallest peak in Scotland). A drive past Rannoch Moor, shrouded in mist, with a warning not to hike a moor in the mist lest you get lost. A waterfall beside the highway where people hiked in Glen Coe. Walking the Royal Mile in Edinburgh. To some people, these are just tourist destinations, pretty sights to see. For me, I was transported with each new thing I saw. Sure, when I walked through the Birks of Aberfeldy that first evening, I felt like I could just as easily have been in Wisconsin, but there was something more. This was a place Robert Burns had drawn inspiration from. The entire trip was one magical scene after another. 

Glen Coe

As I related everything I'd seen to the person I was talking to, they commented they could actually see me change while I talked about it and asked if I wanted to go back. That's a definite... yes, and no. My response was to ask if they'd ever been someplace transformative. If there was anything that touched them on a visceral level. The answer (sadly) was no. Back to my answer. Do I want to go back? Yes. There are lots of things I didn't get a chance to see on my very abbreviated trip, but for the time I was there, I was allowed to experience every minute of the magic. Give myself completely over to the sparks of my imagination. Too often, we don't take advantage of those opportunities, weighed down by responsibilities or anxiety over how to get to the next point or what we're going to eat and where and when. Aside from two meals on the trip, I don't remember anything that I ate. The downside to immersing myself in the experience, for me, meant crashing back to earth when it was over. And I did crash land (for a number of reasons, first and foremost the reason I needed the escape in the first place.)

I wrote about some of the magic I found in LIVING CANVAS, but that's my job as an author, finding the magic in the ordinary--or what some people see as ordinary. I've had many trips since that first "great adventure" in search of the magic, both at home and abroad, and I've tried to convey many of those experience in my writing. On some trips, the magic was harder to find, even when it was right in front of me, but it reveals itself in the quiet moments, when the everyday isn't weighing me down and my imagination can take flight.

That conversation? It reminded me of that weightlessness that goes with experiencing the magic that exists right in front of me. 

And now I need to find a way to incorporate that in the next story I'm writing!