the Highlands

On the Wednesday before we left, Charles and Graham, two men from the church, took us on a day trip into the Highlands of Scotland. This is a slightly edited version of my journal entry from that day.

June 28, 2006

This morning I was really groggy when I woke up. I did a brief devotional on Psalm 114, then helped Rachel fix breakfast. We had half-an-hour until Charles (Mr. Muir) and Graham were supposed to come and take us touring in the Highlands. I scurried around clearing the table, putting the food away, washing dishes, and fixing my lunch, while everyone else sat at the table slowly drinking tea or meandered into the kitchen to make their sandwiches. Missy and Brenda finally got their act together and made sandwiches for Charles and Graham. To prank Charles, they fixed a toothpaste-and-chicken sandwich. (They also made him two “real” ones.) When Lucas and Melissa came, Lucas ejected me from the kitchen and told me to go relax somewhere.

Charles and Graham were somewhat late. Charles Muir is one of the deacons in the church. He’s got grizzled grey hair, and is the father of three or four daughters and one young son, who was baptized two weeks ago. He’s a great joker, especially around Brenda and Missy, but I’ve had several good, serious conversations with him. Graham is short and rather stout, with white hair and dark eyebrows, and a jaunty stride. Charles was our driver, and Graham was our tour guide. He told me that he’s walked from Glasgow to Fort William on the West Highland Way, a journey of about a week. Later, as we drove out of Glencoe, he pointed out the Devil’s Staircase to me, a steep path running up a rocky slope, which is part of the Highland Way.

We drove through Airdrie and Glasgow. Looking out the window, I saw horses and cattle grazing in yellow fields of rape. A deer browsed on the edge of a pasture. To my delight, I also saw a brown-and-white flecked hawk, perched on a fencepost--the first raptor I’ve seen since we came to Scotland. A magpie with white and teal showing startlingly on its black wings poked through the rubbish in a ditch. Aaron and Virginia started to sing. Rachel and John had prudently loaded an armful of Psalters into the van, so I passed them out from under John’s seat. Rachel loves to sing the Psalms. It’s an encouragement to me whenever anyone who’s not an RP enjoys singing the Psalms so much. I watched out the window as Glasgow went by, with its strange patchwork of medieval architecture (the proud spike of the cathedral), red sandstone buildings with rococo shells and cherubs, 1800s Classical porticoes, and sleek new modern towers with green glass and steel. Everyone laughed when a tow truck passed us with a mob of stuffed animals tied to the grill over the back of the cab. We crossed a river on a high bridge strung like a cobweb over the valley. As the road began to wind upward, leaving the city behind, I began to play Natalie MacMaster, “In My Hands”, on my “bug”. High stone walls held back the earth on either side, clotted with moss and ferns. Walls of rhododendron, pine, and spruce shadowed the road. We were in the Trossachs. We drove to Loch Lomond and got out of the car to walk around. The village at the edge of Loch Lomond is purposefully antiquated. We walked down narrow lanes between little cottages to the edge of a clear creek which flowed into the Loch. Emily and Brenda examined all the cottages, joking about finding one to live in. The water of the creek was glass-clear over amber stones. Little minnows flickered through the rapids. Birch, beech, and pine trees grew along the bank. We walked up to a small church overshadowed by huge yew and fir trees. Emily found a Viking grave in the graveyard, marked by an arched stone. Faint zig-zag carving on the stone was half-hidden by moss. The crosses and headstones in the graveyard huddled together under the dark trees.

Strolling down the path from the church, we came out on the shores of the loch. Swarms of midges hovered in the air. Pale sand sloped down into the water. We walked along the shore of the loch for awhile. Small sailboats clustered along the shore. A woman in a short blue dress threw pebbles into the water, and her white bulldog splashed enthusiastically after them. In a bay, some brown ducks and a pair of white swans sailed placidly. On the other side of the loch, the Highlands rose proud and stern, the brown shoulders of the mountains lifting out of their green cloaks. Clouds tore on the highest peak on the northwest side of the loch. Blue shadows fleeted like schools of fish over the tawny crags, sun striking glints through the mist. On the heights, all colors were vague, shades of blue and brown and green. Gulls mewed and cried, their white wings dipping between us on the shore and the misty distance, over the silver-shining lake.

We strolled back to the van through the village. Missy and I brought up the rear, sauntering along. The smell of sun-dried hay blew from a back yard where someone was mowing their lawn. The low brown cottages were overgrown with roses, and we paused many times to smell the full-blown flowers. Peach, pale pink, cream, deep red, crimson, and gold edged with vivid magenta. The sweet, citrusy smell of the roses hung like a faint brightness on the air. Above the village, to the south, a green hill reared. Sunshine flamed over the green, iridescent light leaping down the steep slopes. “Look at that green! There are no words to describe that green. You could study the English language forever, and never find words for it,” Missy declared.

Back in the van again, the road ran up steeply. We left behind the verdant area around Loch Lomond and entered the forbidding part of the Highlands. The green hills straightened, strengthened, grew taller, and became grim. Fir trees marched in endless saw-toothed rows up the slopes. A few birch trees, with silver-green leaves the color of the sky, huddled under the fir trees, their gleaming leaves dripping like rain in the dark shadows. The higher slopes were naked and cold--dry green, harsh grey, drab brown. Charles stopped the car at a parking place on a shoulder of land above a narrow valley, and we stepped out. The frigid wind seethed up the valley to meet us. It scoured the hillsides under the low grey clouds. Above us, on every side, the mountains reared. “That’s Ben Arthur,” Graham said, pointing out the tallest mountain. Far, far below us, at the bottom of the valley, a little house huddled beside a red-roofed barn. From where we stood, it looked no bigger than a scrap of confetti. Fern and bracken clung to the rocks.

We drove down from these mountains, for an hour or so, to Inverary. Inverary has the castle of the Duke of Argyll and is the seat of one of the Scottish clans. It sits on the shore of Loch Fyne, a loch of the sea, ringed round with cold mountains. We drove over the sturdy double span of a stone bridge. Through the trees, we glimpsed the pointed turrets of the castle. Charles parked the car in a parking lot on the edge of town, next to an Anglican church. While everyone else sat down on the grass to eat lunch, Virginia and I explored the church. Stepping through the arched doors, we entered the little sanctuary. Gilt statues marched along the walls. Flowers and incense cloyed the air. Back outside, we walked past the belltower. Graham strolled behind us. “Quite a patch of rhubarb,” he said, pointing to a gigantic plant with tablecloth-size leaves and thick, spiky stems. “Looks prehistoric,” he said with a grin. Virginia and I strolled back past the belltower, following Graham to rejoin the others. I noticed a gigantic spruce tree growing near the church doors. Half-a-dozen enormous stems grew out of one root. The trunks were thick enough to be pillars of a building. Their rough, ruddy trunks glowed under the canopy of dark limbs. I climbed up among the trunks.

We ate lunch sitting in a patch of clover just outside the church’s gate. Charles bit into his sandwich and at first thought that the toothpaste was some weird sort of American mayonnaise, until he got a good mouthful of it. Missy and Brenda were delighted by his disgust.

After lunch, Graham turned us loose to roam the town for forty-five minutes. I trailed off by myself. I climbed down a seawall and walked slowly along the shore of the loch. Among rocks and sand I found purple clamshells and collected them idly. My feet crunched in dried heaps of brown seaweed. Out on the lake, chunky trollers fished on the grey water. The waves were steel grey, rising and falling under the chilly wind. I stood and watched while the sun struck down through the clouds. Sparks of white and pale yellow leaped out on the dappled water. After awhile, I returned to the town and walked along a jetty. People were fishing from the end of the jetty. While I stood staring over the loch, a man flipped in a line with four or five fish flapping and struggling on the end. They were small, wiry fish, with sharply-pointed black fins and white underbellies. I strolled off the jetty to a green area along the shore. People were eating their lunches on benches, or walking their dogs, or just sitting and gazing across the water. I stood on the edge of the seawall and surveyed the area. To my left, the peaks of the castle poked above the trees. On a high hill above the castle, a stone watchtower perched like a crow. Below the watchtower, near the castle, the stone bridge arched over an inlet of the lake. Ahead of me, far across the lake, the mountains marched away, height on height, fading from green to blue to grey. To my right, beyond the jetty, beyond the flat, sword-shining water, a long arm of the mountains bordered the distant shore. I was reminded again of the hills as waves. Not the long, rolling swells of the Lowland hills, but the high breakers of the Atlantic. Knuckles of rock jutted up on the peaks like bubbles of grey foam. Light and shadow fleeted after each other over the hills. Light struck deep into dark fir woods, piercing the sea of spires, and making the harsh green dance gold. Or flecking the rough brown peaks with tawny living yellow, lacing dun moors and grey crags. Sun on the mountains like sparks whirled from a fire over blank darkness. Behind me, the houses and shops clustered together, whitewashed buildings with rows of narrow windows, the sashes and frames of the windows painted black. Below me in the water, clamshells tumbled like iridescent purple peacock feathers. Fishing boats bobbed near the jetty, moored to little red or yellow buoys. Gulls and terns wheeled and cried. The wind smelled of fish and salt.

Once everyone was back at the car, we drove over to the castle. We didn’t have time or money to go inside, but we strolled about on the grounds that were open to the public (the Duke still lives there, so most of the grounds are private--and we could see mundane glimpses of kitchen counters and trashcans through half-open windows). Peering through the gates, Michaela and I saw a field of lush grass running into a grove of trees. Carefully-manicured spires of spruce and fir draped above the gravel path. A copper beech glinted purple in the sun. In the shadow of a spruce tree, Michaela spotted a stone eagle standing poised for flight on a tall pillar. As we drove out of the castle grounds, Charles stopped the car so that Michaela and Graham could pet one of the shaggy highland cattle grazing beside the road. The cattle stared dumbly at the cameras pointed at it.

We drove up again. Red fir trunks and white birch stems marched up the slopes, tall, slender, and straight. We drove past Loch Awe, where the ruins of Castle Kirkintilloch stand on an island in the middle of the water. Charles drove us to a small church, St. Conan’s Kirk, nestled on the side of the loch. Built out of red stone, the church was covered with clusters of feathery fern and moss. Clematis, fir trees, and massive rhododendron bushes buried the little roofs and the slender spire in foliage. We strolled inside. Missy, delighted with the acoustics, started to sing. Her voice drifted on and off pitch, but she was so happy that no one really minded. The actual sanctuary has been expanded with a curved bay of windows in the front. In the front of the church, I sat down in a wooden chair carved with a pair of feathered fish on the sides. The clear windows behind me in the bay were frosted with moss and grit. A stained-glass rose window, covered with a throng of cherubs, hung over the organ at the back of the church. Flipping through the guest book, I found names from all over the world: St. Etienne’s, France; Oceanside, CA; Germany, Holland, Denmark, Britain, Ireland. Exploring outside the church, I clambered down a steep slope through thick rhododendrons. Tiny, unexpected windows peeped out of nooks and crannies, like little pale faces. Spires, carved gutter spouts, mossy rosettes, and gargoyles peered from odd corners and slopes. The church had been cobbled together over a hundred years, the most recent part finished fifty years ago. Grapevines had been tooled onto the lead sheeting over the low hall of the cloister. Dolphins with pursed lips spouted from the ends of pipes running under the eaves. Ferns like small green fireworks starred bits of staircase.

After we left the church, the highlands began to remind me of the Texas hill country. We drove through Glen Orchy, a flat, narrow valley between high hills. A river ran over a bed of white pebbles under low, scrubby trees. We stopped at one spot on the river where the water ran over rapids. Here the water was deep green and cool. Everyone spread out, scrambling over the rocks beside the river. Outcrops of slate along the banks had been carved and scooped out by the water, as though the flat swirls of creamy foam on the river had frozen into stone swirled black and white. Paddling in quiet pools, I found pebbles glittering with fool’s gold. Clambering up the river, my feet crunched through bracken and ferns on the bank. Climbing up over a heap of slate, the roar of water struck my ears as it thundered over the rapids. Above the rapids, the water was so deep that it was almost black, glassy as obsidian. I perched on a pointed rock and looked downstream. The water bubbled and frothed away into dark green. Paper birch trees shivered over the river. Behind them, the mountains rose, dark fir trees again, giving way to brown slopes very high up--dark blue and grey-green.

Graham and Charles rounded everyone up, and we drove away. The land around Loch Lomond, the Trossachs, had been verdant--warm and green. The land around Loch Fyne was more distant, bleaker. Glen Orchy was proud, but welcoming, with the deep blue heights of the mountains standing protectively over the flat valley. As we drove up the valley, we saw a deer grazing on a hummock of land, amid the ruins of a stone building. Lucas was excited, so we stopped so that he could take a picture. The deer raised its head, crowned with antlers, and stared slowly over its shoulder at us. I wondered whether the stone ruins had been left by Picts, and whether they had once tattooed themselves with their blue, antler-branched patterns in that place before they went to war on the Romans.

Glen Orchy gave way to Glencoe (which I would spell "Glen Coe" to distinguish it from Glencoe in Oklahoma, but on the maps, signs, etc. it is spelled "Glencoe). And the feeling of proud welcome was gone, turned into stern loneliness. Green became grey. Bracken gave way to short grass, which bowed under the lashing wind. Brown furze, like clots of seaweed, was at first starred with yellow flowers, but at last even the flowers disappeared. Rocks poked like black-barnacled seashells through the grass. The land was not good even for pasture, though a few sheep grazed up high, like fragile flakes whirled against the crags. I opened the window, and the wind roared in--cold, exhilarating, smelling scoured-clean. We were at sea among the crags, as lonely and cold as though we had been in the middle of the Atlantic, and the mountains as dangerous as huge ocean breakers.

At the mouth of the glen, the land ran up in short slopes. Narrow tracks skirting the edges of the cliffs marked the West Highland Way and the railroad. But these slopes grew and heightened, as they had around Ben Arthur. They raised stern heads against the sky--warriors’ faces, grim and hard under the combs of stone helmets. The glacial valleys wound sharp and narrow through the steep slopes. Stark grooves, where snowmelt had gashed the mountainsides, ran down toward the valleys. Black caves opened where the water had carved the water near the peaks. These are old mountains. Not peaked, like the Rockies, but rounded by wind and water, all the soil scoured away. In some places, trees clung like moss to the steep crags. In the bottoms of the valleys, water had gathered. Flat sheets of grey snowmelt and rain, or pools among the grass tussocks. Graham told me that most of the valleys are peat bogs. Where the grass looks as though it grows lush over solid land, it’s actually drawing a veil over a bog. Pointing to the clouds marching down over the mountains, he warned us about going hiking in Glencoe. “The mist comes down fast, and then you can’t see a hand’s breadth ahead of you,” he said. “If you move, you’ll come to a sheer drop, or a bog. But if you stay put, you’ll freeze to death.”

A hard, lonely land. Graham used the word “stern” over and over. Lonely. Empty. Barren. Callous. We drove past three houses in an hour, each house separated from its neighbor by many, many miles. One house huddled alone at the foot of a crag, with a couple of barns clustered nearby. Its grey roof blended in with the stone--only the white walls showed against the misty moor behind, and in the snow, even these would disappear. I thought of the whirling cold of the snow, the loneliness of a human being lost in these mountains.

We stopped at a Shell station on the far edge of Glencoe. I bought a double Mars bar and gave the other half to Missy as we drove on. She’d never had one before. “You’re my hero,” she sighed happily. I sucked on the creamy filling, caramel and chocolate, and watched the hills glide past. They were lower now, more like the area around Glen Orchy.

As we drove up toward Fort William, I noticed a sign for “Lothlorien B&B”. :o)

Our last stop was Fort William. Charles gave us an hour-and-a-half until supper. Michaela and I strolled through downtown, between rows of shops. First we explored an Anglican church. The graveyard was bordered with roses. Inside, the sanctuary was ornate with carving and gilt. The pipes of the organ were inlaid with vines and fleur-de-lis. Stained-glass windows pierced the wall above the pews with stories of St. George. At the back of the church, a series of arched windows told the stories of Noah, Moses, John the Baptist, and Philip. We walked through the area at the back of the church, which had been dug into a small crypt. There was an ornate font in the center of the crypt--an odd place for baptism among the monuments to the dead.

Back outside, we strolled through the shops more. We passed pubs, a butcher’s shop, clothing stores, a library, and a retail store. All the signs were written in English and Gaelic. Michaela stopped into a Scottish store to look for a plaid blanket. Then I led us exploring down to the beach. Fort William sits on the edge of Loch Ioall, another sea loch. There are mountains on both sides, and Fort William huddles between the sea and the mountains on one side. Behind the town, the mountains rise up and up to Ben Nevis, the tallest mountain in Scotland. Standing in the street, Michaela and I could see the grey head of the mountain flecked with white snow. We ran across the highway to a little park above the shore. But we were disappointed. A steep seawall held back the land on which the park sat, and below the seawall the beech was stony, covered with rubbish and evil-smelling clumps of black seaweed. We stumbled on a tent where a homeless person was obviously staying. The reek of garbage and dead fish blew up to us. Out on the water, though, there were more fishing trollers, and a whole skein of moored sailboats like slender herons hovering over the water. Gulls darted, crying, over the heaps of rubbish on the beach.

We turned away and went back to the town. This time we walked up through the town, which is built in ridges. We climbed steep streets and flights of stairs, up and up, into the neighborhoods which look out over the loch. But there was no path that would lead us out of the town into the mountains, so we returned to the town again. We found Emily, Virginia, and Rachel in another Scottish store, so we stopped in. The store was large and full of odd things: woolen cloaks, sweaters, scarves, blankets; silver Celtic crosses and necklaces and earrings; shot glasses, a wall of whiskey, boxes of biscuits and shortbread; postcards, furniture, stuffed animals, and statuettes. I was rather disgusted by some of the items. There were shelves full of books of spells, and mirrors with skulls and ghastly women around them. As we walked back to the parking lot to rejoin the others, Michaela and I talked about the darker side of Celtic culture, Druids and witchery.

We ate supper at a restaurant similar to the one where we’d eaten on the way back from Wigtown on the last day of the Covenanter tour.

After supper, we were back on the road again for three hours. We drove back through Glencoe. The crags were even more stern, even more lonely, even more dark as night fell. The clouds had begun to come down lower, sweeping quickly over crests and cliffs. I shivered--the mountains were almost evil in their loneliness.

I listened to the “Fellowship of the Ring” soundtrack. The grandly lonely music was appropriate to these cold, open spaces--age-old, unshaken.

As we drove down, the land became more welcoming. Woods of fir trees gathered darkness about themselves. Endless rows of black, straight trunks fleeted past. As the light dimmed, the ferns on the forest floor gleamed faintly blue through the shadows, as though reflecting the darkening sky. The woods gave way to open, rolling hills. I saw a small white cottage huddled under fir and spruce trees, like a cygnet cuddled under dark wings.

Open hills gave way to city. We skirted Stirling. When the road ran up on a ridge, I glanced back. The valley between the ridge and the distant highlands was misty blue. Orange city lights swam in the mist. The Wallace Monument stood up like a saffron plume, lit from below, and Stirling Castle glowed like a glass box on its hill.

The last strains of “May It Be” drifted away as we drove down into Airdrie.