The Crying Places & Atlas Obscura
DECEMBER 13, 2018
## “There is a wild beauty in the Scottish Borderlands that moves me to the core of my being…
Smailholm Tower
I could not get enough of the landscape as we wound our way through the countryside in search of one of the few remaining restored tower homes from the 15th century. The low-grade buzz of anxiety that is always with me melted away as I stood on the raw, windswept land beneath Smailholm Tower. I had a feeling that I had come home, maybe for the first time. I could not stop the tears, it was as if a long held grief was released as I made my way up the craggy path to the entrance of what remains of a complex that was built to withstand the English raids of the time. How could I know a place so well, where I had never been before? How could rocks and sky speak my secret name and know me? I do not have answers to these questions, but I am somehow more complete for having been to this land. A place that now holds my tears and my heart.”
I am honored and delighted to be one of the twenty-two submissions chosen for the “22 Places That Brought Atlas Obscura Readers to Tears” for the online [Atlas Obscura - Curious and Wondrous Travel Destinations](https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/22-places-that-brought-our-readers-to-tears). Traveling with two of my best friends to this amazing place is forever a part of my own internal landscape and something I will never forget.