Ep 29. Rediscovering Home: Travel, Stories, and Cultures Rich in Connection (w/ Dougie Mackay)

Today’s session around the fire was recorded about 10 days into my time in Scotland and watching it back for these notes, I’m aware of how ‘fizzy’ and ‘unsettled’ my system feels; how old meaning-making patterns were being stirred and and challenged and I was in the place of being unmade. Perhaps you’ll see something different in me, too. Or perhaps that’s how it always was and it looks and feels different now, later, after more shifts and settlings.

But one thing today’s guest, Dougie Mackay, and I share is a living inquiry into how to be a more natural human. And so, here we are, me at the start of a trip and him in between journeys, telling stories, sharing points of connection and curiosities, enjoying being human, together. 

Dougie Mackay is a storyteller hailing from the Scottish Highlands, who weaves his background in Community Education with his love of the natural world, bushcraft, primitive skills and other regenerative practices, into a storytelling practice often done outdoors or in unusual settings, and used for group-work facilitation, development, connection, and empowerment.

He’s renowned for his warm demeanor and engaging style and all of that comes through in our conversation as we explore some his favorite topics, like: stories as tools for entertainment, education, and connection to culture and landscape; the functionality of storytelling in modern times; how can we use stories to enrich our personal lives; and what can we glean about an older animistic culture through the stories they told…

as well as:

• our personal quests for meaning and cultures of substance (and how Dougie finally discovered meaningful culture at home in Scotland);
• following the trail of ancestral severance;
• the instinctive human impulse to be curious about the horizon;
• how travel can help us see our own homes, what’s local, and what’s universal;
• Scottish Ceilidh culture as a cultural template for hospitality and connection;
• the overlapping skills for storytelling and traveling well;
• how he got into stories and storytelling; 
• generational events like the Highland Clearances and how they can continue to impact a cultural psyche;
• the ability of stories to bring things alive in our bodies and help us make sense of where we are;
• the three types of stories in the Scottish seanachie tradition;
• holding stories with reverence to find more richness;
• the practice of ‘leaving something out for the fairies’...

and more.

He also shares two, beautiful stories with us around this digital hearthfire. So if you love to travel, love stories, and are curious about how we continue to be more natural humans - join us. I think you’ll find we have much in common.

You can find Dougie:

Website – https://storyconnection.org/

Instagram - @dougie.mackay.story

Podcast - https://storyconnection.org/tales-for-our-times/ (available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts)

And if you've come for Dougie, I hope you'll stick around for more conversations to access, repair, inspire, and evolve our humanity and serve the wild, tender aliveness of our personal and collective hearts.

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