Earthnotes-Scotland was founded by Leonie FitzGerald in 2005, as a vehicle for providing opportunities for people to spend time in nature. This is currently done through our short-break holidays. Leonie has spent a lifetime close to nature, in many different ways:
At 18 I moved to U.K., the land of my ancestors, from Zimbabwe, 
where I was born & raised. In childhood, lion and leopard would pad past our door at night. Antelope graced the plains, grazing alongside the cattle. Although indigenous people lived close, real relationships only developed later, with the Maasai & Samburu when I worked in Kenya in the 70’s. This was when I first encountered the desert, in Sudan and the Sinai. I remember feeling tiny and insignificant in those vast, spare landscapes, yet also very comfortable and at home.
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20 years later, during a 6-month sojourn in Alaska. Here, I began to discover a sense of life purpose, which is to connect people and wilderness. This prompted the start of a process of learning and discovery – what does life purpose mean and how does one live it?
I trained with Ruth White (www.ruthwhite-gildas.co.uk), healer and workshop leader. The Ehama Institute (www.ehama.de) taught me about indigenous ways of living in harmony with nature and society and how to sit in group council. While training in the Personal Totem Pole Process (www.deepimagery.org) I journeyed deeply with my inner animal guides. Bill Plotkin (www.animas.org) and Trebbe Johnson (www.visionarrow.com) taught me about being a vision quest guide.
Nature has always been my primary guide and teacher. Walking in a Glasgow park, I heard ”be a gardener”; I have been one ever since, alongside workshops, quests and other work. During a solo trip to the canyons in Utah, USA, I felt blessed by the energies from the 7 Anasazi Kivas (ancient temples) that I was camped near. I left feeling my life purpose affirmed and somehow deepened by the wisdom of these Ancient Ones.
I began studying Ecological Science, a good way, I thought, to combine work with my passion for nature. After 2 years I found the pressure of academic effort, physical work and 
financial stress too much and left the course. This felt like failure but a chance visit from a friend of my brother opened a new window for me. She gave me a bag of jewels and some basic instruction, which birthed a new career, creative, not scientific.
Jewellery making (Earthnotes) combined with gardening created a stable base from which to offer my programmes for connecting people and wilderness. A vision quest in the Sahara, accompanied by Tuareg nomads and their camels (www.visionarrow.com and www.kamelkarawanen.ch) completed this phase of my journey.
I felt drawn to Scotland after hearing about the wild west cost from a fellow volunteer during a 9-month sojourn on a desert kibbutz, and have lived here since 1983. During this time I have experienced life in the Highlands, the Islands, Dumfries and Galloway, as well as a more recent spell in the Central Belt. The pressures of modern life, the challenges of climate change and economic recession, and the disconnection which exists between everyday life and our natural roots has inspired the creation of these holidays. I think so many people are out of touch with nature, and simply spending time out in the natural world can have such a restorative effect.