As any expat or long-term traveler knows the adage “you can’t go home” is no joke.

Things change- places, people, and most importantly you. You start to feel as if you’ve left little parts of your soul all over the world. Parts that only exist not only in that place, but that time as well. That said, finding a place that calls to you and really breathes a true feeling of home in you are rare and precious. And a place that calls you not once, but every time you visit it? Even more rare.

Home has always been a bit of a weird concept for me. Like so many kids these days, I grew up the child of divorce. What made my childhood unique though, was that my parents truly split my time 50/50. I would spend the first half of the week with my mom, the second half with my dad, and would trade every other weekend. This, along with the inevitable moves each parent made meant I never had a truly strong definition of home.

Sure, I have some nostalgia for all the places I grew up in, but there is no one place I can point to as an example of home. Now I consider home to be wherever I am sleeping that night, wherever my husband and I are living at the time, where my cat is, but I never feel an ache over moving on to a new apartment in a new city. I miss the people we leave and the memories we made, but not the space itself.

All of this is to say I was shocked at how at home I felt the first time we stepped into the Scottish Highlands

It has been five years since our first visit and the place still calls to me daily. We returned for an extended trip through the UK before we left Europe and it felt just as it did the first time. Maybe there is something to be said for living in your ancestral lands. Though it is not the place of my birth, it is the homeland of my clan. I have spent as much time in France, as I have in the Highlands. Probably more and have more recent blood ties. Maybe it comes from growing up a McLeod with red hair. France was a regular part of our home life, but Scotland is stamped on my face. It is an undeniable part of my being. The Highlands are where my soul feels at rest.

The green, the hazy mists, the damp, and yes, the legends of the fair folk and the fantastic all suit me in a way nothing else quite does. Is it possible I am idealizing a place I have only visited and never lived? Of course. Even so, I know that someday I am meant to live there, that my soul is calling me home.