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(Image from Love of Scotland.)

I once took a great, one might even say magnificent, fall down a long metal staircase in a castle ruin in Scotland. I met a Spirit of some kind on the way down, which may or may not explain why I survived a fall that should have killed me, and that’s the story I’m going to tell now.

My husband (who prefers a pseudonym so, online, I call him the LovelyMan or the LM) and I took our first trip to Scotland in 1993. The LM was combining business with pleasure, which was how we were able to afford the trip at the time. We spent our first week in Glasgow, taking the occasional day trip by train to places such as Sterling and Edinburgh. Our second week we rented a car and set off with a rough itinerary, wandering and following recommendations of the locals.

Early in our first week we stopped at a Tourist Information Center (TIC) in the Muckle Toon ‘O’ Langholm in the Scottish Borders area. Every morning we would locate a TIC in order to book our room in a B&B for the upcoming night. The LM and I don’t usually travel in such a seat-of-the-pants manner. That’s what made this trip all the more fun. We were never quite sure where we would end up.

At the TIC in the Muckle Toon ‘O’ Langholm we booked our room and then spent some time chatting with James, the man who helped us with the booking. After a bit of back and forth about Mary Queen of Scots (I had read a hefty biography about her before our trip), James suggested we visit Hermitage Castle. As it was sort of on our way (or at least not completely out of our way), we decided to follow James’ advice and directions.

We set out on our adventure by following our first example of the narrow single-track country roads in Scotland. The road did a lot of winding through a rolling countryside where the primary inhabitants seemed to be sheep. The weather was typical of what we had been experiencing: rain with sunny spells. It was a misty rain with ground fog creeping and crawling over the hillocks, creating a mysteriously beautiful atmosphere.

We didn’t encounter any other vehicles on that road to Hermitage. We had to stop once or twice to wait for the sheep to clear out of the road, a novel experience for us.

The rain had stopped but it was still cloudy and gloomy when we arrived at Hermitage Castle. The weather and ground fog added to the castle’s grim appearance. The castle is next to Hermitage Water and is surrounded by bleak and open moorland. Although not that far from civilization, it did seem very remote. I read somewhere that Radio Scotland once described the castle as the embodiment of “sod off” in stone. It certainly seems to give off that message.

There were no other tourists there. The only person around was the castle’s caretaker, Patrick, who gave us a little information about the castle, took our admissions fee, and sold us a guidebook.

The LM and I walked down the path that led to the castle, guide book in hand, admiring this big hunk. The weather cleared, the sun came out and it looked like it would be a nice day after all. Best of all, we had the place all to ourselves. We were off the beaten tourist path.

Inside the castle ruin we meandered around, awed by the sight of our first castle ruin. We noticed a set of metal stairs leading up to what would be, in these times, the third floor (just to give you some of idea of height). There was a bird’s nest up there and the LM wanted to go up and have a look around so up we climbed. When we got to the top I took a few photos and then decided I wanted some from ground level. I started down the metal staircase. My foot slipped a bit and I said to the LM, “Be careful going down. The stairs are very slippery.”

Famous last words. Well, ok, not last words. I wouldn’t be writing this now if they were.

I turned around, started down, and my feet went sliding out from under me. What happened next was pretty much a blur as far as the ride down the stairs. I somehow managed to maintain an upright position, sliding and bumping down, hanging on to the railing, which was as slippery as the stairs, for dear life. I know I was going down with great speed yet it seemed to take forever. In fact, time did stop at one point. Even my husband, who doesn’t like to speak of such things, thought something “odd” had happened as I neared the bottom. His sense of time slowing and standing still parallels mine, but I think his was more about fear. He later said he thought for sure he’d be taking me home in a body bag.

I was nearing the bottom of the stairs, having cut one finger and torn off the fingernail of another, when I realized I was about to slam into a 400-year-old wall. At the speed I was moving down the stairs, the meeting of my body and the wall was not going to be a pleasant experience for me. The wall, I was sure, would survive it. As for me, I didn’t think it likely I would live through it, much less walk away. I had a lot of time to think this out in spite of that speed. Time had slowed…

… and two or three steps from the bottom time stopped.

I don’t know where I went or who I met. It was a woman, that’s for sure. At first I felt this incredible warmth as I moved through an amazingly brilliant and beautiful light. I thought at the time “Oh, I must have died on the way down.” There was no fear at all in that thought.

This is the part everyone wants to know about. I don’t mean to be a tease, but I honestly don’t remember what happened here other than I met and spoke with a Spirit. Was she Divine? I don’t know. Perhaps she was a spirit of the castle or of the land for which I felt a great affinity, as if I’d come home, the home of my soul. I do feel, and have always felt, that she introduced me to the concept of a Goddess because it was from this point that my spiritual path changed. Shortly after this event I began to study Goddess religions.

I think I spent a bit of time outside of time, outside of this world. And when it was time, I was back in the fall only something had changed. I hit a cushion of warm air that slowed my fall so that by the time I hit the wall, I just grazed it with my nose instead of smashing my face into it. I walked away with a smudge of dirt on my nose, a cut finger, a very sore right hand (from where it hit the wall), and the loss of most of a fingernail.

A small price to pay for an incredible experience.

I spent the rest of the trip seeing things out of different eyes. I think I’ve spent the rest of my life seeing things out of different eyes. There’s a beauty to life that wasn’t there before. I forget that from time to time. My eyes tire or my mind is out of tune. There have also been times when I regret having left wherever it was I went and find myself yearning to feel that warmth and that light. Then I remember I carried a small bit of that out with me and it’s there whenever I want to feel it.

We’ve been back to Scotland once since then. I can’t wait to go again. Just as I think I carried a small piece of the land back with me, I’m pretty sure I left a small bit of myself there. Everything seems complete, joined, when I’m there.