Moniker, handle, label, John Henry, call it what you will, our names define us in one way or another. My blog’s name is significant in that it is a play on my actual name, and it describes what I do, both in my blog and in my “real” life.

“Betz” is an abbreviation of my surname, and “cee” is an expansion of my given name. Together they spell, phonetically, anyway, a fine old-fashioned woman’s name. So Betzcee is me.  Have name, will ramble. My husband and I have become that North American cliche referred to as Snowbirds. We live full-time in our fifth-wheel trailer, spending summers in Canada, our Home and Native Land, and winters in the southern parts of the United States. In other words, we ramble.

You have likely noticed by now that I also epitomise another meaning of the verb “to ramble.” As noted yesterday, I like to talk, and deprived of a hearing audience at home, I ramble on-line instead.

Now that’s cleared up, I want to follow up on a prompt I found in my mailbox this morning, asking where I would go right now, if I found I could travel at the speed of light.

First, a little stage-setting:

” We camped the next night on the banks above Loch Ness. It gave me an odd feeling to see the place again; so little had changed. Or would change, I should say. The larches and alders were a deeper green, because it was now midsummer, not late spring. The flowers had changed from the fragile pinks and whites of May blossom and violets to the warmer golds and yellows of gorse and broom. The sky above was a deeper blue, but the surface of the loch was the same; a flat blue-black that caught the reflections from the bank above and held them trapped, colors muted under smoked glass.”

Diana Gabaldon,  Outlander

While the photograph above is not one of Loch Ness, it is definitely of the Scottish Highlands, from whence came my grandparents early in the twentieth century. Scotland has long held a fascination for me, most likely due to a strong family connection, though in recent years, Ms Gabaldon’s series of novels, born in that legendary land, have clinched it.

Given the power of instant transportation, I would fly directly to Edinburgh and walk the historic Royal Mile, taking in Holyrood, Edinburgh Castle and the cemetery of the kirk at Canongate. From there to Perth, on the River Tay, where I would hope to connect with some of my kin, be they living or not.

Then a drive North on the A9 to Inverness, to experience a place brought to life so expertly by Ms Gabaldon that I feel as connected to it as to the ancestral home. I couldn’t leave without a trip to Culloden Field and Culloden House to witness the site of the devastating loss suffered by the followers of Charles Stuart, the “Bonny Prince” and the end of the Highland Clans of Scotland.

While I am blessed with the opportunity to travel every day of my life, anywhere we can drive with our trailer, I long to experience the feel of the highlands and make that visceral connection to who I am, where my family came from. Who I am.