We get around

For the four+ years of our marriage Saturdays have often offered opportunity for adventure, and our four Edinburgh Saturdays have been no exception.  Week one we stopped in at the local food co-op looking for bulk flour.  While we didn’t find the flour, we did get three new (fiction) books, four baking apples which we made into apple crisp, and an hour-long conversation about politics and social justice with the director of the co-op.  Week two we explored buildings in Old Town (contrasted with New Town which was built in the late 1700s) and a five-mile, self-guided walking tour of neighborhoods we hadn’t yet visited.  Week three (last week) we strolled through the Princes Street Gardens, collecting fallen rose buds on our way to a farmers’ market where we expected to find booths of inexpensive produce. Instead we found carts of meat–beef, lamb, pork, venison, and not your ordinary supermarket meat, injected with hormones and preservatives, lingering for days on the shelves.  No, this meat was fresh off the beast, pure color, presumably pure taste.  It was all we could do to look and not touch, and to smell the delectable aromas of samples and not taste.  In retrospect, it only makes sense that in October, in a country of 7 million sheep, most farmers would sell fresh meat, not fresh produce.  

Yesterday, though, we encountered an adventure to top them all: hill-walking with a group from church.  If you’re like us, you don’t immediately find much that inspires excitement (let alone adventure) in the term ‘hill-walking’.  Sounds more like an activity for a lazy Sunday afternoon, doesn’t it?  Well, that’s what we thought before we walked up the ‘hill’ known as Meall Ghaordie.  Before the walk, we thought, ‘What’s a hill to us sturdy Washingtonians? What could be so interesting, not to mention challenging, about a walk that climbs less than half of what we climbed in August with a 40 pound backpack?’ Just prior to the walk, as our Scottish friends donned hiking boots and gaiters I confess that I enjoyed a bit of an internal scoff, thinking that those kind people had no idea what a real hike was like.  Within twenty minutes of walking, I learned the importance of the waterproof boots, and by the time we arrived at the hill’s summit I had a new respect for hill-walkers.

The hike itself wasn’t the real challenge; the elevation gain of about 2700 feet in 3 miles was intense but not exhausting.  But the terrain was like nothing we’ve ever experienced.  With the nearly daily rainfall the ground is super-saturated; it’s soggy and slippery and stinky. There were stretches in which every step filled my shoe with cold, mucky bog-water.  More than once I sank up to mid-calf, and on the descent I slid a good 15 feet…on the whole right side of my body.  That was the terrain. Then there was the wind and the rain. I don’t remember ever experiencing such strong wind; Jackie nearly blew over at the summit.  Though the base temperature was at least 50 F, with the wind, I’d guess it was close to 35.  As we nibbled on lunch at the summit, I wanted to talk, but I couldn’t both talk and chew.  And, I wanted to eat more of my lunch than I did, but getting warm by walking was more important.

We enjoyed the adventure of our first hill-walk. We also enjoyed chatting with folks from church.  It was good to make more new friends and to feel ourselves growing into the community of Holyrood. Oh, and for the record, I broke a cardinal rule in conversation with a Scot; it’s a rule that I knew well, a rule that Jack and I have rehearsed more than once. Still, I broke it and in so doing offered myself as the butt of a good joke. The rule is: never ask a Scot about his/her pants.  Yet, at the beginning of the walk, just making casual conversation with Lorna I asked if her pants were waterproof. Sigh. She looked at me with a bit of shock and awe that I would ask about her pants, let alone if they were waterproof. And then she just laughed and playfully told her boyfriend I deserved to be pounded.  I can’t blame her. I would probably do the same if someone asked if my underwear was waterproof, wouldn’t you?