Isle of Arran

Every landscape has a story. Every pilgrimage leaves a footprint. Every lesson begins by listening. Welcome to Lessons from the Land, a continuing series exploring the wisdom discovered through sacred travel, personal transformation, and our relationship with the living world.

In my previous blog posts, I shared that my teacher and dear friend, Andrew Steed, will be traveling to Spokane, Washington, for the first time this coming September. Over the past ten years, I have had the privilege of joining Andrew on sacred pilgrimages throughout the British Isles, the United States, Canada, and Jamaica. As we count down to his visit, I've been taking a trip down memory lane through some of these adventures. This week, we travel to another island off Scotland's coast, the Isle of Arran, for a pilgrimage that unfolded in September of 2019.

Between Iona and Arran, so much of my path deepened. In March of 2017, I attended a workshop devoted entirely to the Three Strands of Poetry—the same medicine that had cracked something open for me in the Cave of the Dead. That fall, I began a two-year shamanic practitioner training with Andrew, alongside nine other women. We began in Maryland with a Wild Hunt, where I was introduced to the Celtic Gateways, also known as the Medicine Wheel. We gathered twice more in the United States over the next two years, and completed the program together in the Kingdom of Fife, Scotland, in the spring of 2019. There is so much I could share about those years, but for now I want to stay with the pilgrimages, and the one that awaited me next.

The first time I visited the Isle of Arran was in 2009. That year we were on a tour of Scotland, and Arran was a place we visited briefly one afternoon. During that first trip to Scotland, I traveled with my mom, daughter who was five at the time, and our dear friend Chris and her sister Suzy. Chris and Suzy’s ancestors were from Arran, and interestingly, my ancestral lands are not too far from Arran either, so this was a fantastic first visit to whet our appetites for all Scotland has to offer.

The return trip to Arran ten years later brought a very different experience; more like digging into a hearty meal versus a wee taste of what the island had to offer. It was fantastic to be back and to see more of this beautiful island. Andrew booked us an amazing home on the South side of Arran, and it was a lovely time of year to be there. We were with a small group of other pilgrims, and the trip was off to a spectacular start with an all-night five-hour fire on the beach where we sang Amrun, the Spirit song, and whispered people’s prayers into the fire. It was exhilarating and so deeply meaningful!

We also had the unique opportunity to visit multiple caves, including the King’s Cave and Queen’s Cave, where we engaged in deep spiritual work. The photograph below is over another beautiful cave that we visited on the beach.

Caves on Arran, Scotland, 2019

I didn't know it yet, but this pilgrimage had some deep learning opportunities to offer me. I will tread lightly here but will say that this trip marked the beginning of my rose-colored glasses coming off. Up until that point, I had taken people at face value, making the assumption that anyone speaking the language of deep spiritual work was truly living it. This pilgrimage was the first crack in that assumption, though it would take years, and lessons far beyond spiritual circles, before I truly learned to see people more clearly. I won't go into the specifics of what unfolded here; those stories aren't fully mine to tell. But the lesson followed me long after I left the island. I had known the words ‘don't make assumptions’ from The Four Agreements since the 1990s—but knowing a teaching and living it are not the same thing. Arran was where that agreement started to have new meaning to me.

This illumination hit me hard. I could feel it in my heart. There was something deep here that was ready to be released, perhaps so deep that one could call it ancestral.

Standing Stone at Machrie Moor, Arran, 2019

Near the end of the pilgrimage, at the standing stones of Machrie Moor, I became seriously ill—a gastrointestinal illness that felt like being stabbed in the stomach, one that lingered for weeks after I came home. There is a photograph of me lying on the ground beside one of the stones. When I later showed it to my mother, she told me it looked as though someone had been stabbed by a spear in that very spot. I don't know if that was a memory of another life surfacing through my body, or the land simply meeting me where I already was. But it felt significant. I had, quite literally, a great deal to release.

Jenna at the Standing Stone, Arran, 2019

Lessons from the Land

Looking back, I can see that Arran's real lesson was never really about the people who disappointed me. It was about what their behavior reflected back to me.

Others are often a mirror. When someone's behavior triggers an unpleasant feeling in us, that discomfort is usually pointing at more than just them—it's often shining a light on something in ourselves that still needs our attention: a wound, a coping pattern, a distortion we haven't fully faced. I feel so much gratitude, even now, for the people who—without meaning to—helped me see my own.

Walking a shamanic or medicine path means taking honest inventory of these things: our core wounds, and the coping behaviors we built around them. Slowly, we learn to transmute those distortions into a higher vibrational way of being. The Three Strands of Poetry, which I wrote about in Part II, is one way to do that work. There are many others. It matters less which path someone chooses, and far more whether they choose to do the work at all.

Iona taught me permission—permission to feel, to trust my own inner knowing. Arran taught me discernment—permission to trust my own perception of others, rather than handing it over to their presentation.

But Arran asked one more question, harder than the rest: is my true self in alignment with how I present myself?

That question isn't really about anyone else.

It's about mastery of self.

Is your true self in alignment with how you present yourself to the world?

See you next week, where we will step into another pilgrimage and listen for what the land has to teach.

With gratitude,

Jenna

A Note as I Publish This — August 2026

As I've been finishing this post, wildfire has torn through our home city of Spokane. The Old Trails Fire came very close to us—close enough that we were among the first families evacuated, and we spent four days away from home not knowing what we would find when we returned. We are beyond blessed: our home and land were untouched by this devastating fire. So many others were not so fortunate. Firefighters dug a trench around our house and cleared brush and small trees nearby while we were gone. We are home now, though still at level 2 status, ready to leave again if we need to. We feel so blessed and filled with gratitude for the first responders and those fighting the fires in the Spokane area.

What has moved me most this week is watching our community rally around itself. There is so much loss—hundreds of homes, with the count still rising as I write this—and so much love showing up alongside it. We are shifting our own attention now to helping others who weren't as fortunate as we were.

Andrew’s upcoming visit in September will be needed now more than ever. I have been in touch with him daily, keeping him up to date on things as this story unfolds. We will be shifting gears during his visit to hold a workshop titled “Rising from the Ashes.” This workshop will be held the weekend of September 12th and 13th. Andrew is very gifted at teaching others how to transmute their emotions, and this will be an opportunity to begin the healing process for those called to work with him. Stay tuned for details—they're coming soon.