Our friends, Martin and Kathy, have traveled abroad often with college students, and they always tell them: “Expect a problem that you could not have anticipated. And expect something so good you could not have imagined it.” Wise words for any traveler.
In early summer, my spouse and I hiked for two weeks in the Scottish Highlands. With silk long johns, wool caps, and rain gear, we were ready for the cool, drizzly weather, and we dodged the biting midges.
The “something so good you could not have imagined it” did not come from the sublime landscape, though the soaring peaks of Glencoe and lochs slicing deep blue through the valleys made me gasp, daily. No, it was the Scots themselves who surpassed my imagination.
And so I want you to meet Wendy Spencer, a kindred spirit we met serendipitously on our final day. The sun came out for our train ride from Glasgow to West Kilbride, a storybook village near a family pilgrimage site, Hunterston Castle. My mother’s last name was Hunter, a descendant of a clan of huntsmen for the royal family. My parents loved their visit to Hunterston many years ago, and I wanted to retrace their steps and honor my mom’s memory.
When I booked our tour, I was told that once in West Kilbride, we should call Eddie’s Taxi for the three mile ride out to the castle. West Kilbride turned out to be Thomas Kinkade-cute, and very sleepy at midday. We phoned Eddie’s Taxi. No answer. We tried again. No answer. Walking through town, we found the public library, where two cordial librarians also tried to get Eddie on the phone, but no luck. One speculated, "Maybe Eddie's in the bath?"
We blinked back out onto the sunny lane, worrying aloud about our dwindling chances to get to our tour on time. Then came a warm, reassuring voice: “How can I help you?” A smiley, athletic woman with cropped gray hair approached us, groceries in arms. I told her we were trying to get out to Hunterston, and she asked if we had a connection to the place. My eyes filled with tears as I told her I was making the trip to honor my mom, who’d died a few years ago. Instantly she said, “Oh! I’ll drive you myself!” We protested, but she waved us across the street and through her blossoming cottage garden, so she could drop off her groceries. Her sweet, historic cottage, she explained, had once housed local linen workers; the fabric was then sent for printing in Paisley.
The car ride was brief, but our conversation was a cascade of happy coincidences. Wendy had worked in mental health for two decades on the island of Lewis and Harris, where we’d just hiked the sea-sprayed cliffs. We’d both raised two daughters. We’d both fallen in love in college with women’s history and Marxist feminism. Wendy told us excitedly about researching, as part of her coursework, the match girls’ strike in 19th century London. Her findings, based in hard-gained primary texts, had been published in Everywoman journal in the 1980s. She no longer had a copy, she said, but she’d been proud to share the issue’s cover with novelist P.D. James. I felt unreasonably, and wonderfully, connected to this woman who’d saved our day.
We parked on the sheep-dotted grounds of Hunterston, exchanging hugs and emails. The stone castle — with its 13th century tower and 16th century turret — is small but well-restored, the guide’s anecdotes burnished by time. After the tour, we wandered the grounds, and when the gardener saw me peering through the iron gates into the old walled garden, he unlocked it and waved us in, gratified that I could name the particular plants he’d coaxed into bloom in such a wet Spring. “Stay as long as ye like,” he said. “Just lock up behind you.” And so I was able to whisper my mother’s name under soaring old sycamores and into the beds of yellow roses, her favorites.
Once back in South Bend, I emailed the Glasgow Women’s Library, and within a day, an archivist found and shared Wendy Spencer’s inspiring article on the 1888 match girls’ strike, published on the century anniversary, with its moving photographs of the young women who set an example for other laborers. The archivist praised Wendy’s research, and added that her father was also from West Kilbride — “small world.” Wendy is delighted to have her article, again, and I’ll gladly share it with you if you contact me.
In worrying times, and always, it’s good to celebrate humans who are “so good, we couldn’t have imagined” them. Wendy reminds us that we are everywhere.
Music: "The Highlander" by peakfiddler
