In our Travel Journal series, The Stories We Tell, Dylan Greer, explores the hills of the Highlands and the seaside towns of the Isle of Skye in Scotland. But what he discovered is what connected people to those lands.
It rained the whole drive up the western coastline from Glasgow, so the soil had soaked into a soupy brine by the time I arrived in Glenelg. On the drive, my guide and host Eddie — a Scots playwright, highlands tour guide, and windmill engineer — would pull over and tell stories of what had happened there: the clearances, a battle between warring clans, or the filming of the movie Skyfall, while I was bitten by midges. To me, the land seemed static, to Eddie, each creek and hill had a different heart; a story that made it unique. When we reached the highlands, I stepped out of the car and sank ankle-deep into the mud, which grabbed my shoe and wouldn’t let go.
Latitude: 57° 38′ 22.19″ N
Longitude: -6° 15′ 33.0″ W


Latitude: 57° 34′ 59.6″ N
Longitude: -6° 19′ 38.7″ W
We reached the Quiraing and the hills changed shape becoming sharper, more violent. The grassy round knolls were replaced by sheer cliff faces and brooks were replaced by mountain streams racing to the sea. We hiked for an hour, up muddy hillsides and jumping over creeks that dripped from the cliffs as small waterfalls until we reached the highest point, the only place I had seen in the highlands absent of sheep. It was windy, damp, and alive. The water pushed onto the land like an army and stole silt back into the sea. As we searched for fairies in the crags and nooks of the rocks around us, Eddie recited a poem by Robert Burns and I saw what connected us to that land: the stories we tell, and those that came before us.
Share your favorite travel stories with the world.
This story was sponsored by
Dylan Greer
Dylan Greer is a fiction writer and travel writer from Los Angeles currently living in Linares, Spain after graduating from Lewis & Clark College with a degree in English. He has been published in the Pioneer Log, the Odyssey Online, the Lewis & Clark Literature Review, and was a semifinalist at the Kennedy Center American Collegiate Theatre Festival. In his spare time, he enjoys playing music, playing sports, and above all else, exploration.
RELATED POSTS
THE TOP 10 INSTAGRAM ACCOUNTS FROM KYIV
Not a lot of people think of the capital of Ukraine as a travel destination. However, Kyiv (Kiev) is a multifaceted city that dates back to 1,500…