Crianlarich Rail Station

There are worse places to be stuck than the Crianlarich rail station, even if the toilet in the bronze-award winning bathroom is clogged and the other one is locked. The award, by the way, was for tidiness.

Murphy's law has governed the last couple days of travel: everything that could go wrong, has. But of course that is an exaggeration. After all, I am here, writing this blog: here both in the sense that I am alive and not dead and that I am here in this spot, sipping tea at the Crianlarich rail station. 

Crianlarich is part of the Trossachs National Park and this green, luscious region is easy on the eyes. Advertisements for Scotrail read in big, block letters: "BEAUTY, HISTORY, WILDLIFE for free with your rail ticket," referring to the views out the window. Mostly I see beauty and history unless sheep count as wildlife. Two out of three is not bad.

Yesterday, my 6-hour driving plan to go from Skye to Edinburgh was rerouted due to construction which put us back an hour and made it no longer plausible to check in at our hotel before returning the car. There were a few other mishaps such as being unable to find the check-in counter for my mom's airline (because it didn't exist, as it turns out) and being unable to find our hotel room because room 284 was actually on the first floor. In the big scheme, these are tiny matters and only impacted us due to weariness of travel.

But the good news is: I am here! And for both senses of that word, I am grateful. And my mom is successfully over the pond right now, making her way from London to Chicago, hopefully sleeping.  I am on my way to spend two weeks learning about worship and then the Gospels at Iona Abbey. 

I was content to spend the rest of the afternoon sipping tea at the station even if travelers around me grumbled about the delay and missed connections. A group of passengers were required to deboard the train midway from Glasgow to Oban due to the train being over-crowded. A rail service bus is expected any minute.

I thought I was perfectly content. But when someone came running into the tea room of the station, announcing, "the bus is here!" I heard my previously silent self respond with a loud: "Woohoo!"

And now my "here" is somewhere else... Near beautiful Ovan and closer to my destination of Iona, home of the 1450 year old Abbey founded by St. Columba.

Wherever your here [gentle reader] is in the moment, I hope you have reason to be glad for it. But when it's time to move on, I hope you, too, will let out a proper exclamation.