Please note this program has changed dates from Tues., July 19 to Thurs., July 21.

Ron Beard first visited Scotland in 1989 as part of a countryside stewardship exchange, returning in 1990 and 2000 for sabbaticals as a U Maine Cooperative Extension faculty member, and assisting with community development projects. Other trips followed including a canoe trip down the Spey River with artists, musicians, educators and ecologists, a week aboard the schooner Leader in the inner Hebrides, another week recreating the life of an 18th Century drover. Most recently, he went looking for his McIntyre roots and their home for 250 years or more in Glen Noe, off Loch Etive. He'll share some of what he has learned about Scotland's fabled history, the ways in which land ownership and land use have created a distinctive, much photographed but emptied landscape, and how thinking about that landscape and nationhood is evolving.