A Past Life Memory Carried on the Wind

I stood on the hillside of a barren, snowcapped mountain in Glencoe, a vast valley in northern Scotland. Wind whipped around me and the strains of bagpipes threaded their way through the cold air. The heather on the hills was brown, my scarf was brown, my hair, blowing into my face, was brown, golden brown, the same color as the hills.

mountain in Glencoe Scotland where I had a past life experience

It was a moment almost frozen it time. Everything slowed down and then I saw myself, not as the 50 something year old woman that I currently was, but as a girl in her twenties, with that same golden brown hair whipping around her face. But then I understood the mountain. I knew its ways and its cycles; I knew where the unseen trail was that zigzagged up its steep side. And I had sheep.

I could feel the bond with my sheep, and I knew where to take them to find the best breakfast on the unforgiving hills. I knew how to navigate what a moment ago look unnavigable.

I knew I wasn’t far from home. My house was just over the next hill. It was a little whitewashed house next to a river that snaked through the valley bringing water to the people and animals who lived there.

And then it was gone, the vision, drifting away on the cold bagpipe filled wind.

I was sure I had seen myself in a former life. Not see really, rather felt. I felt the mountain and I knew it. I felt my sheep and I knew them, I felt my strong legs beneath me, and I knew myself and my home.

But how was that possible? As I came out of my reverie I looked around at the starkness of the steep range all around me. There was not a manmade thing in site but for the narrow winding road I was standing by, the one with the little pull off so visitors could admire the view.

Sometimes we have experiences we feel deeply, but we cannot explain. This was one of those.

I climbed back out of the cutting wind and into the warmth of the car and pulled back out onto the road to continue my journey. Within moments I had driven around the bend and there, nestled in the valley and protected by a narrow stand of pine trees was a little whitewashed house, a cozy little house that looked like it had fought for its life for generations, a little house on a snaking river. And in that moment, I knew. That had been my home. I had been a young woman who cared for my family’s sheep. I had grown there, in the arms of the mountain, understanding it, being part of it. My life’s thread of many lives had, at some time in the past, or possibly on a different timeline, had been woven into that landscape.

And now in this timeline, I carry the vivid, tangible memory of that one in my heart.

Bless Scotland, and Glencoe, and the barren mountain, and the sheep….for they are part of me.

wandering in the universe,

laura