I usually avoid beginning a piece of writing by providing a definition because I find it overused, but in this case, it seems necessary.
Somehow, I became fascinated by a particular word and then a place by the same name: a place called Inverness.
When I first heard the word, I thought immediately that it meant some kind of inner state of being. Perhaps an inner state of tranquility and peace, even. And I was surprised when I looked it up that it was a kind of coat, or as Merriam-Webster defines, “a loose belted coat having a cape with a close-fitting round collar.” Its etymology is Scottish, being the name of a contemporary city on the northeast coast of Scotland and former county and capital of the Highland region.
It is also a very uniquely beautiful and mysterious place in Northern California, my home. Located along the long and narrow Tomales Bay about an hour north of San Francisco and just a few miles from the Point Reyes National Seashore—Inverness—with its thousand or so residents, one post office, and a few restaurants and businesses with uncertain hours, rests sleepily beside the tumultuous San Andreas Fault line, the boundary between the great Pacific and North American tectonic plates, underlying the bay. Meanwhile, the waters are so calm and the bay so narrow that even a semi-proficient swimmer could swim across it.
So I had found myself fixated and fascinated by this word, and then this place, and I knew I had to go there and see for myself what it was all about. And while I respect and abide by Merriam-Webster’s definition, I started to invent my own meaning of inverness. It somehow spoke to something inside me, and to a place inside I felt I needed to explore. So, I went there to understand what my interpretation of it meant. And now I will provide my definition.
This is what I’ve gathered from my experience in Inverness among the low-sloping hills covered in green grass and the presence of the bay water filling up your view at high tide, rising and ebbing like subtle emotional states in this simultaneously wild yet tranquil, tucked away region of Northern California…
I’ve come to a place here, and within myself, where we are perhaps most wounded—carved out like the long slash of the bay betraying the great and looming fault line beneath. It’s our innermost wound at the core, and you can feel the immensity of this incision.
Yet, when you go to that place inside and face it with clear eyes and choose to be unafraid of the pain and truth of what you experienced, it’s then when you can just sit with it… as I did when I sat beside the pensive waters of Inverness… and ask yourself, why? Why must I feel unworthy or unloved or unwhole from this experience when there is no reason for it?
Because being here is not a mistake. And you are not a mistake… no matter how severe the wound.
And when you begin to know this, the long emptiness you’ve felt can begin to be soothed by the compassion of your understanding, much like the tide waters faithfully flowing in on a quiet morning in Inverness.
