The Still Life Stories on why Americans love Scotland.

If you’re reading this and you’re an American, you probably love Scotland and you may not even know why. Chances are, you’ve got a little Scot in your history. They got around over the last thousand years. But even if you don’t have any familiar/DNA/cultural connection, you probably still love Scotland or maybe the ideal of Scotland.

First off, Scotland hasn’t had much of a history of screwing other countries. We Americans have a long and brutal history of getting into other people’s chili, but not so much Scotland. I’ll have to look that up someday.

Of course, it could be sheer numbers. There are currently around 5.5 million lives in Scotland and it’s estimated that there could be as many as 80 million people all over the planet that are of Scottish descent.

I know I’ve got some Scot in my family somewhere. My maternal grandmother was Ann Florence McAdams, or as she shared, Annie Flossie McAdams.

Sounds pretty Scottish.

So maybe there is some deep, buried DNA that loves everything here. The architecture, the language I can barely make out, the bagpipes.

The fricken bagpipes.

I get an overwhelming emotional wave of something-I-can’t-explain when I hear bagpipes.

My friend Sandy (a Scot) plays the strange contraptions and he brings them to West Texas for months at a time. Seeing the Great American Desert and hearing bagpipes is a bit of magic.

And the food. Yeah, it’s fried and pied and breakfast comes with haggis so finding something with vegetables instead of animals is a stretch but you get the feeling the food evolved to give warm and hearty comfort on a cold, rainy night.

Which it does.

And haggis. I love it. I can see how it becomes part of one’s life.

And I have to say something about the accent. Some languages are flat and monochromatic but to hear a Scot speak is to hear a bit of song. A typical sentence raises and lowers the timber enough that it becomes a tune.

That’s why it sounds so nice to a foreigner. It’s a bit of singing that you hear everywhere you go. Even in you can’t understand a word of it but eventually figure it out.

I’m in Duns, Scotland this morning. I’ve been here for a week and have a week more, staying with the father/son owners of Fort Glen Whisky. Their blending house is here, just a short walk to the center of the village and they’ve come to love the place.

I’m in The White Swan Pub, which is part of The White Swan Hotel and I’ve just had a Full Scottish Breakfast.

Almost a Full Scottish Breakfast.

I had the hippie-gringo version. The vegetarian version. No bacon or ham, or real haggis, but subbed out with vegetarian haggis. I’ve got no idea what’s in vegetarian haggis and it’s probably a crime against all things Scottish, but it’s tasty and it’s good to have a meal without meat. And at eight pounds plus one-fifty for coffee, a bargain. I may not need to eat for a few days and the coffee is wonderful. I always bring my own mug, which may be weird, but we all make concessions when we travel.

The pub is comfortable. It’s like home. The beauty of a Scottish pub is that it’s not trying to be something else. It’s a second living room for the people who live here. A place to meet, sit, have a drink or a meal and talk.

No loud music.

And a rugby game on the telly. Big Australians beating the shyte out of other big Australians.

No pretend décor. No corporately trained kid telling you his name and astrological sign and letting you know he’ll be your server (no shit homie) and asking if you’d like to start with blooming onions.

The lady running the pub, Claire, who obviously knows everyone here, RUNS the pub. She’s kind, efficient, and made me, a very foreign foreigner, feel right at home, and I can’t understand a word she says. I felt like a total clod having to say “huh” several times to figure it out.

There are maybe a dozen people here this morning, most having coffee, some meals of fantastical pies and chips and some with beers and glasses of whisky and it’s just crawled past noon.

It’s Scotland.

It seems everyone here knows each other because they say hello and goodbye when they come or leave. But in the Scottish manner, and the manner of many places that have smaller degrees of personal space, they give each other space.

I’m across from three ladies having their second cappuccinos and chattering and laughing and sharing stories. You get the impression they’ve known each other since they were schoolgirls and meet in that booth by the frosted windows every Tuesday morning and laugh and laugh and laugh. And nary a cocktail on the table.

I eventually introduced myself and learned that they come here every week and lament on politics. These ladies are passionate about freedom and independence. And when they say freedom and independence, of course they mean SCOTTISH freedom and independence. They gracefully agreed to a video interview in front of The White Swan and it was magical. One of them is wanting to run for office and I’d love to see her interview get a million likes.

They gave me great sympathy for the chaos back home because it seems to get worse to the point that one just wants to quit and never go back in true Maxfieldian manner.

But when you have your coffee and your breakfast in a cozy Scottish pub with your Viking War Emotional Support Mug full of hot Scottish coffee and three happy ladies in the next booth that laugh and laugh and laugh, you tend to forget the doom and gloom that seeps out of the shitstorm back home. There is good in the universe and it’s hard to imagine why so many people are bent so hard on screwing that up.

If you’ve never been to Scotland, go.

Yeah, it’s cold and wet in the winter but there is no bad weather, just bad clothing. The summers here are sublime and very much alive. There are flowers everywhere and everything is green and lush and all the ancient stone walls are covered in lichens and have green stuff growing on the top. You’re not likely to run into a lot of salads but screw salads. Have salads in California. They do salads better than anyone and there are beaches and palm trees but life isn’t about salads and beaches and palm trees twentyfourseven.

Scotland is hearty and savory and deep and rich and seeps into your soul if you let it.

Like a great Scotch Whisky. It’s deep and savory and rich and seeps into your soul, one little sip at a time.

And there’s golf, but screw golf. Screw salads and golf. A pint and a pie and a dram and a good jacket are pretty hard to beat.

And PS. Thirty seconds after I wrote that, a big, burly and bearded Scot in a workman’s boots sat at the booth across from me ordered a salad.

He probably plays golf too.

Chris Greta is currently living in Scotland writing about great, undiscovered distilleries, the people and the village for The Still Life Stories.

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