The Heart of a Wanderer

After years of wandering Scotland’s history and landscapes, it’s hard to believe I was once a wide-eyed American taking my first trip abroad. That there was once a time when I didn’t know what it felt like to be alone amongst standing stones still clutching their ancient secrets. To summit camp high above the Highlands as rain battered my tent. To daydream on the deck of a ferry. To wander among heather-blanketed hillsides, where vibrant swaths of pinks and purples overwhelm my senses, and squishy mosses entice me to take a seat and rest awhile.

The woman who wanders wasn’t always me… or was she?

Discovering My Roots

I was born in Maine and adopted when I was 8, and my adoptive family cherishes its Scottish roots. In times when I’ve felt conflicted about my identity, they encouraged me to claim their heritage as my own. This cultivated a wonderful love of Scotland, but something felt more deeply rooted than an inherited connection. I started digging into my genealogy and followed the historical breadcrumbs back to a Highland weaver who immigrated to Nova Scotia after the Battle of Culloden.

The ancestral callings persisted. In 2016 they found a way to move through the Scottish blood in my veins and guide me back to Caledonia. “You’re a MacKenzie,” they whispered, “find your way home.”

I was working in Boston at the time, having landed there after a decade in Oregon, and years in the deep south before where I earned a bachelor’s in wildlife sciences. I had struck out alone in search of a fresh start, driving my 20-year-old car from the Pacific Coast to the Atlantic coast—quite literally from sea to shining sea. The next year, my grandmother passed away, and I faced the choice between the next job or using her financial gift to follow those primal whispers. The whispers won and I bought a one-way ticket to Edinburgh.

I had traveled the US and Canada extensively but this was my first trip abroad. Five weeks and 3,200 rental car miles later, I sat crying in a Glasgow hotel, not yet understanding how a foreign land could feel like home, and why my heart was breaking to leave it. I had found the “more” I had gone in search of, and I couldn’t quite let it go.

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The Scottish diaspora is vast, and many of us share a yearning to connect with our roots. And who can blame us when our genetic footprints don’t belong to the lands in which we were born. So we scrimp and we save and try our hardest to make the ancestral pilgrimage a reality.

We have become a stereotype, fair enough, we probably earned that! Hyperfocused on clans and tartans, planning itineraries as if nothing exists south of the Highland Fault, and limiting our understanding of Scotland to the shortbread tin version created by Sir Walter Scott. But I wanted to know more.

I returned to Boston a different woman, and as Frodo muses in Lord of the Rings, there was no picking up the threads of the old life. So I traded my high heels for hiking boots and never looked back. What followed was years of minimalist living and financial uncertainty, but I was becoming rich where it mattered. After decades of molding my life around other people’s beliefs and interests, I was discovering my own. I was finally living, and it felt amazing.

I shredded so much baggage during that first wander. It wasn’t just my ancestry I was discovering in Scotland – it was my soul. Like the blooming summer heather on the Highland hillsides, I felt alive and vibrant. I continued to work contracts and odd jobs Stateside, saving up for regular returns to Scotland, for up to 6 months at a time.

My wanderings usually find me off the beaten path, which is still plentiful in Scotland. But I feel ever vigilant in this digital era where places go viral in an instant, and the footfall that follows can be devastating. There are plenty of places I’ve discovered but never written about. I like to encourage that sense of childlike curiosity as opposed to telling people exactly where to go—despite many requests for GPS coordinates and directions. Wandering is fun, you should try it!

I’ve always been drawn to the quieter Scotland.To its history and its landscapes. Walking mountain paths once trodden by drovers, staring up at lichen-encrusted standing stones clutching their ancient secrets, surveying the landscape from the rubble of ancient hillforts, exploring damp and crumbling castle ruins… my mind is always drifting to centuries and millennia past. I feel a connection to the people who were there before me, knowing that their eyes fell on the same wild, rugged landscapes as mine.

But Scotland is so much more than its history. It also has a vibrant presence, filled with welcoming, diverse, and forward-thinking people. From bustling city streets to remote islands, from the pages of history to the present day, Scotland’s people intrigue and inspire me.

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Becoming a Writer

I penned my first blog on St Andrew’s Day, shortly after my return from that first trip, and steadily built up my social media platforms through my photography and storytelling. I never set out to be an “influencer.” I’m the type of person who likes to disappear into the woods, stand at the river’s edge, and hear only the roar of the water. To hide in the hills and lose all sense of time. And yet somehow I found myself with an online community that sprang up around my platforms, people in an increasingly divided world finding common ground in their love of Scotland.

I have always resisted the pull to monetize my blog, not wanting to risk authentic creativity. Instead, my income comes from my freelance writing as well as my short stories and a big step I took in 2024 – writing my first book, Lochs & Legends, published by HarperCollins. I wrote this book for my friend Andrew McAlindon (aka Andy the Highlander), a Scottish influencer and tour guide. We run a tour company together and have been friends for years. So when one of the biggest publishers in the world came calling, he told them I was the writer for the job. I was both daunted and excited at the opportunity.

Writing Lochs & Legends was another journey of self-discovery. I learned that so much of writing a book is simply showing up. The early mornings on the couch, the late nights at the kitchen table. I learned a lot about myself and what I’m capable of, and soon after its release in August 2024, Lochs & Legends became a Sunday Times Bestseller.

Wandering into the unexpected

I have tried my best to live my life with a commitment to authenticity, courage, and hope. I’ve followed my intuition when others around me didn’t understand. When even I didn’t understand. I was content to wander solo, and walk my own path. I found freedom, strength, and independence. My intuition has served me well, time and time again.

When Covid shut down world travel, I listened again to that intuition, and I took a 1-year remote contract. I remember my mother hugging me as I cried, facing the reality that I wouldn’t be returning to Scotland for at least a year. She reminded me that it wasn’t going anywhere, and she was right, of course. I kept telling stories through my blog, but my itchy feet couldn’t sit still. I set my eyes on the beauty of my home state, the deep Maine wilderness of Baxter State Park, and planned my next wander.

I headed north (my favorite direction), in a quest to climb Katahdithe crown jewel of Maine, a sacred site of the Wabanaki people and the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail. For most AT hikers, the summit of Katahdin is where the reality of their accomplishment sets in, that their journey of over 2,100 miles is coming to an end. It’s often a place of deep reflection, and as I stood there in the clouds, I too felt winds of change.

I love to backpack and have set up my tent in some incredible places – from exposed summits to coastal caves and thick forests. But it’s what drove me out of my tent that changed my life next. It turns out I had chosen my day to climb well, as it proceeded to rain most of the week. My leaky tent forced a change in course and as I sought dryer places, I came face to face with a handsome and very interesting park ranger/writer on the steps of his duty station. And that was how two adventurous souls found love in the Maine wilderness.

That ranger is now my husband and we are now building our home on 10 acres in the woods, half a mile up a primitive dirt road. We get our internet from a receiver mounted high up in a hemlock tree. For showers and dishwashing, we collect rainwater or haul it from a natural spring on our property and burn firewood from our land. Off-grid life requires a more deliberate mindset, where you must plan for and anticipate things, and be ready to adjust when nature throws a curveball.

I will be forever grateful for those curveballs. As I exchanged vows with my husband in the same beautiful place we met, I thanked the rain for bringing me to his doorstep.

The Heart of an Expat

I have learned that life is full of seasons. Some things we take with us into new ones and others we leave behind. My season of self-discovery shaped me into a woman who knew who I was and was ready to find love and build a life with my park ranger.

I now spend half of each year in the shadow of Katahdin, reminded each day of the beauty of the home I have rediscovered. I have shed the internal conflict I once wrestled with because I don’t have to choose between the two places. My heart has two homes, and I look forward to continuing my love story with both of them.

I have the heart of an expat – caught between the home I was born into and the faraway land that holds my heart. The very definition of bittersweet. I will always miss Scotland when I’m not there, so distant, and yet always right here, part of my soul. A friend I met at just the right time when my heart was open and my mind full of questions about myself and the world.

I have also learned that life shouldn’t be lived in pursuit of absolutes. It’s about balance, acceptance of change, openness to new things, and leaving room in your heart for your past, your present and your future. These open-hearted wanders through life will collectively make you who you are.

So who am I now? Well, contrary to popular belief, settling down doesn’t have to strip you of your accomplishments as an individual or make you boring. Being a solo female traveler is empowering and has been incredibly vital to my life. However, I often felt like my values and interests in the world were tied up in those solo travels.

Solo adventurers have inspired people for centuries, and I’m delighted to let you in on a little secret: you don’t have to be single or nomadic to be adventurous! There are so many ways to wander. It’s great to take inspiration from others, but let it be your own inner voice that guides your feet.

Happy wandering!

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Lilly Hurd is a Sunday Times bestselling author and the voice behind ‘Find Her in the Highlands’, a popular blog in which she shares stories about Scotland. She has wandered Scotland extensively and now lives off-grid in the Maine woods with her husband, Andrew Vietze. She returns to Scotland whenever it calls her back.