"Doubly good to you": Walking in the Highlands, Part Two

Friday, 2 October 2020

I edit down the full Scottish breakfast to what I think will be a manageable amount of food. It's still too much, but what I can eat of it is delicious, and I will certainly be well-fortified for my morning walk.

I've decided to limber up with something easy, so I head over to the Gynack Mill Trail, which is basically flat. This will help me break in my walking boots and test the Viewranger app on my phone. The boots, which I have miraculously remembered how to lace properly, turn out to be a perfect fit. The app takes a bit of getting used to, but it's easier than trying to navigate with map and compass whenever the waymarking is inadequate and the path ambiguous.

Which is often.

So I don't exactly manage to follow the trail, but I do have a lovely hour's walk. The sun is out. It's warm for October in the Highlands. The sound of rushing water is the only thing I hear.

I'm definitely ready for a serious walk after lunch.

*****************

"Be bold, start cold," I remember as I set out. Yes, it's 50° and I'm a Floridian now, but it's sunny and I'm going to be putting in some effort. So I zip off the outer layer and stuff it in my backpack, where it ends up staying for the whole walk. Thank you, CJ.

The afternoon walk is seven miles; it ascends 400 feet in the first 1.3 miles, which is fairly ambitious for me. The first part of the trail is very forest-primeval-on-the-left, sixteenth-fairway-on-the right, but it's not too long before I've left the golf course behind. The path gets rockier and muddier, and as I gain elevation the views open up.

When I reach the highest point on the trail, there's a sign telling me that the summit of Creag Beagh -- ah, so apparently I'm on Creag Beagh -- is just a quarter of a mile away. Why not take a detour, just so I can say I got to the top of a crag, even just a modest one?

I didn't quite make it. It was a steep climb, but I was game. It's just that every time I turned back to 

take in the view, I felt increasingly uneasy. I'm afraid of heights -- not of altitudes, exactly, because I'm perfectly happy being on the zillionth floor of a skyscraper, as long as I'm not remotely near a window. The higher I got, the steeper the descent looked, and the more I got that on-the-ledge feeling. Better not risk getting to the top and then being too freaked out to get back down.

And indeed my descent was just at the limit of non-freaked-outness.

I get back to the signpost and rejoin my originally planned walk, which takes me to a loch . . .

across a moor . . .

and amidst some very contented ewes.

And somewhere along the way, as I was touched by a light whose quality none of my pictures can capture, and my ears were attuned to the hush and stillness that surrounded me, my heart became unfeignedly thankful.

Thankful for my health, thankful for my husband, thankful for my friends, thankful for my work, thankful for the respite from my work, thankful for music and moors and ewes and everything waterproof.

I stood still, and I prayed.

And then, just before I could break out into "Doubly Good to You" and have any passing Scots wonder about the sanity of this oddly blissful American, I resumed my walk