Letter From The Highlands - October 2003
By Anne Perry

I’m just home from over seven weeks travelling around America and Canada, back home for a couple of days, and then to London again overnight, and now at last home, so far as I know, until well into the New Year, perhaps February or March.  I had a wonderful time, working hard, of course.  But that is why I went.

I travelled from the east coast of the United States to the west, then back again, then west again, then finally from Vancouver to Chicago to Miami and home.  I experienced freezing to 108 degrees, desert to torrential rain, and sea level to nearly 9,000 feet.  And all of it was good.  However it will be wonderful to get back into the same bed I got up from, to launder my clothes in the washing machine and feel they are really clean – as opposed to a hotel hand basin, and to get back to writing the next story.

The most powerful lesson of travelling for me is that people everywhere are generous, almost all are honest (I know not all, but I have never met with dishonesty while travelling) and they have more desire to do good than harm.  Architecture, climate, food and other customs may vary, but goodwill does not.

Of course I missed my immediate friends and family, but telephones are marvellous, and on the whole I was far too busy to think of anything much beyond the most urgent issues:  Where am I?  Should I be here?  What time is it here?  Do I have everything that belongs to me?  And then the subsidiary questions:  Am I on the right plane?  Will my luggage get to the same place that I do? (Usually – but not always)  And am I talking complete nonsense?

Nothing disastrous happened.  I was always on the right plane, my luggage always turned up, eventually, and if I was talking nonsense everyone was too kind to say so!

One wonderful experience I had was a short break between the end of my American tour, and the book fair in Minneapolis.  I went with a friend for two days past the Grand Tetons to Yellowstone Park.  There surely cannot be more spectacular scenery anywhere.  The sheer beauty of Yellowstone defies description, from the overwhelming size of the mountains, down to the miniature, exquisite beauty of brilliantly coloured algae coating smooth stones under a thin film of hot water from the thermal springs.  It looked like hammered gold leaf, such as one sees on a Byzantine icon, set with green and yellow and turquoise enamel and gems.  But it was all warm water algae, works of nature – by the acre!

We saw buffalo from only a few yards away, then elk, even a bull elk with a magnificent rack of antlers, standing alone in the forest, away from his females.  He lifted his head and bugled – a magical sound in the stillness of the sunlight and the trees.

The mountains seem so eternal, and yet the environment is fragile, and we have already ruined so much of it!  How many of us remember that we were given the stewardship of the earth, NOT the ownership of it.  We will be called to render an accounting one day!  How many birds and beasts, fish, trees and flowers are going to rise up in judgement against us?  How can we be trusted with worlds in eternity if we can’t or won’t care for the small patch of this one that we have now?  Sometimes I fear we have forgotten the purpose of it all.  Life is to learn, to nurture, to grow in the spirit so that we love all that has been made by the hand of God.

Now I am ready to start the next story, and feel raring to go after eight weeks at least only talking about writing rather than doing it.  Not that the talking wasn’t terrific, and in the long run will be highly productive.  It is extraordinarily important to meet lots of different people, with all manner of ideas and beliefs.

Dimensions of Truth

Sometimes one hears a train of thought, a totally new concept or understanding of something, and the natural reaction is to reject it because it crosses the ideas one already has.  But sometimes a little more consideration can show that it is only the other side of a truth which has far more size, other dimensions that we did not perceive before.  It is sometimes not a contradiction to one’s beliefs, but an extension of them.  We know the story of the blind men describing an elephant – one touched its trunk, another its tail, a third its side, a fourth its ear, a fifth its tusk, a sixth its lip.  Six UTTERLY different descriptions but all true.  They had never seen an elephant.  Are we too often blind, and unwilling to listen to a larger, more complete description?

I met so many interesting people throughout my seven weeks.  It is most educational to listen to completely opposing points of view, religious, political or anything else, and realize that both people believe what they are saying, completely honestly.  I would hate to be a juror, and I am so glad there is very little indeed I have to judge – only what I myself should do, what I see as the truth of something, how I can be better, wiser, above all kinder.

Kindness is the heart of it.  I fear at times we get so caught up with the easily measurable rules: what to wear, what to pay, what time to practice which observance, that we lose sight of the fact that kindness, or charity if you prefer, is the heart of it.  And without the heart beating, the rest of it is dead.

I have spent seven weeks dependent upon the kindness of strangers, the honesty of people I don’t know – and never have I been let down!  I cannot be worthy of that, unless I treat strangers, ALL strangers, in the same way.  And I can be grateful – and believe me, I am.