Actor Sam Heughan is one of those lucky people who get to work at their childhood dream job for the rest of their lives, and to his credit Heughan knows exactly how fortunate he is and truly appreciates it all. In Waypoints: My Scottish Journey, he uses the five days it took him to complete a 96-mile walk across the Scottish Highlands to reflect upon his life and how he has ended up as perhaps the biggest star of the still-ongoing Starz series Outlander. It is a journey that readers will be happy to take right alongside him.
The walk itself physically tested Heughan to an extent he never imagined it would when he started out on his spur-of-the-moment trek. It is the wrong season to be tackling the walk in the first place, and Heughan's last minute enthusiasm the night before he begins walking results in him buying way too much camping gear for even a man his size to carry on his back for what will turn out to be more than 100 miles of rugged hiking and mountain climbing. Despite coming close to giving up at one point, Heughan, largely through the kindness of strangers who come along just when he needs them, finally figures out how to get the job done. Still walking largely on his own, however, he learns as much about himself and the kind of man he wants to be as he does about getting up and down the trail from Point A to Point B. Waypoints, you see, is about more than one "Scottish Journey."
Sam Heughan is an interesting man who was blessed with a remarkable mother who raised him and his older brother on her own. Heughan's father abandoned the family when Sam was just two, so he has no memory of ever having a father at home. His mother, however, recognized her son's acting ambitions early in his life, and she made sure that he was always in a school that would allow him to hone his skills, even to relocating the family when that became necessary. Heughan's perseverance ultimately paid off in the career-making role as Jamie in Outlander, but a whole lot had to happen before that lucky break made him into the star he is today.
As Heughan puts it:
"For me, this journey has removed the noise and demands of everyday life to remind me that we're all just passing from one waypoint to the next. What matters is that we can look back at each stage knowing that we made the most of it." Page 233
Or as C.S. Lewis put it in this Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian quote offered by Heughan, "Isn't it funny how day by day nothing changes, but when you look back, everything is different?"
Heughan has structured the book so that each chapter contains several alternating sections covering his life with what he is experiencing on the actual walk across the Highlands. The structure works well for the most part, my only complaint being that some of the segments are individually too short - just when I was sinking into them, they were too suddenly over and I was having to switch reading gears again. Sam Heughan fans are sure to enjoy the book, and I suspect that readers unfamiliar with Outlander or Heughan are going to become fans of the man they meet for the first time in Waypoints. (I'm calling this one a solid 3.5 stars rounded up to 4 stars for rating purposes.)
One for me I think, Sam. I don't know the actor all that well as we've only seen a few episodes of Highlander but I'm pretty sure that won't matter.
ReplyDeleteIt doesn’t matter at all, Cath. In fact, it might even be a better reading experience if you don’t know him well before reading this. I’ll be curious to hear what you think of it.
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