by Malachy Duffy

Believe me, finding inner peace was not on the agenda during my recent, first journey to Scotland. I was on an assignment to write about the terrific single malts distilled on the lovely Hebridean island, Islay (EYE-luh).

GOING MY WAY
After catching my breath in Glasgow (where my father is from), I picked up a rental car at the airport and set off on a two or three hour drive to catch a ferry to Islay. Now keep in mind that in Scotland, as elsewhere in that part of the world, you drive on the left. Not my forte, so I at least ordered an automatic transmission car without which, I probably wouldn't have gotten out of the parking lot.

Thus began one of the most hair-raising interludes I've ever spent behind a wheel, trying to think about driving in a mirror image, not trusting my natural inclination to go right in case of trouble (which would have thrown me inconveniently into head-on traffic) and trying to read signs chockablock with symbols that might as well have been from the walls of Tut's tomb. Not the road to tranquility, but I finally did get headed in the right direction.

The first couple of days on Islay, I was racing around to keep appointments, really not paying much attention to the scenery. But by the third day, I started to realize that I was surrounded by striking vistas of peat bogs, mountains and the ever-present sea. I started to slow down and to open my eyes-and, I think, my heart-to the gifts Islay had to offer.

MOMENTS OF MAGIC
There are three moments that stay with me. The first was on a drive to the island's most isolated distillery, which required taking a winding, one-lane road. The weather was mercurial: showers one moment, mist the next, a minute's respite, then another deluge. Just as I reached the crest of a hill, the clouds scudded away letting in rays of bright sun that illuminated the beautiful panorama of the east end of the island, and its neighbor, Jura, with its peaked mountains. The colors were amazing: bright green of the fields, rust of the autumn heather, the gentle azure of the sky, the deep midnight of the sea, the soft ochre of Jura.

The next day, I crossed the Straits of Islay to Jura, where there is a single distillery (and where George Orwell, in an isolated cabin, wrote 1984). No sign of Big Brother anywhere, just some sheep, the deer that far outnumber the people, and a postcard-perfect port town. The road back to the ferry landing offered a sweeping view of Islay, and, just as I reached a rise (timing really is everything), a rainbow appeared over the Straits. Once again, I let myself go into a reverie, really another mindset-and it had nothing to do with schedules, deadlines, appointments, very little, in fact, with human affairs.

THE MYSTICAL MULL
I could not talk of Islay, however, without recounting the rainy, bone-dampening day that I visited the Mull of Oa, a great promontory on Islay's west coast. It is capped by a brooding stone tower, a monument erected by the island in memory of American sailors who were killed there in World War I when their ship was torpedoed. The walk up to the monument was slow because of the rain and quiet because the whole area seemed to be an elegy, gray, silent...and oddly tranquil. Reaching the tower's summit, we could look down the coast and see lines of sharp cliffs and broad beaches disappearing into the fog.

Gazing west, I knew that the next point of land was home. Yet, at that moment, I felt at one with Islay. I thought of my good fortune at having been able to journey to this place, of the heroes memorialized at this spot, of others I knew who had died, of how beautiful life is.

In this most unexpected of places, I found a deep peace. And even on this crazed island of Manhattan, I can conjure up the Mull of Oa and, if only briefly, take myself away from the bustle and into the serenity of another world.