With four hundred people aboard the plane hurtles through the night. I try to find a position to sleep. If I lean too much to the right, my leg falls asleep, but when I sit up, I get cramps in my neck. My thoughts do not leave me alone. The news that we received a week ago gives a new direction to our plans for the future.
When Frodo left the Shire, he also missed his soft bed. Waking up with a stiff neck and a tree root in his back, he is thinking of the words of Bilbo:
“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door,” he used to say. “You step into the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to.”
Wise words. When we boarded a plane more than three months ago, we thought we were going to Chile, but it turned out that the mountains of Patagonia, the garlic harvest at Chiloé and the meadows surrounding Osorno were only stopovers on our journey to Scotland. Freddy has applied at the James Hutton Institute in Aberdeen, and is going to work there for a year.
That means that this period of work on the countryside is over, and we are again preparing a move to the UK. After the Brexit referendum we may witness another historic referendum: the independence of Scotland. We missed our own parliamentary elections by one day, but a stewardess comes by to show us the preliminary results.
When the blanket slides from my shoulders once again, I give up my struggle with the chair. I’ll have to accept the sleepless night and a jet lag. In the Netherlands, we will have to arrange a lot in order to move to our new place during the Easter weekend. But in the vacuum of traveling I do not yet have to think about that. I fish my earphones out of the chair and sink into the series on my screen.
Have a safe Journey home.
Hi Maaike,
Are you and Freddy now in Scotland?