More Days in Scotland - The Bits and the Bobs

Walking - Pretty much. It's no elliptical machine. The only difference between walking 150 km through Scotland and walking to the cafe down the street is that it takes a lot longer and you've got your own dead bodyweight attached to your back with ergonomic little straps that squeeze the flesh on your hips into thick, red nubbins that run around your waist and eventually you start asking yourself questions like, "Is this the technical definition of 'agony'?" But it's all walking, except for the shuffling and the staggering.

Thinking - When I was a teenager I had to walk half an hour from the bus stop to my house. Once in grade eight I invented a world of flying horseman who lived underground and I can still remember my surprise when my house suddenly reared up in front of me. That was my first experience of a walking trance. Since then my mind has become considerably less supple. Now I mostly just repeat single words over and over to myself, like the names of small towns. 'Crianlarich'. 'Kinlochleven'. I overheard an American woman pronounce 'Rowardennan' as though she were calling forth the sword of destiny, and it was over for about two hours. Apart from that I meticulously planned the rest of my life, plunged into various oceans of regret and longing, and defeated hordes of interlocuters with cunning arguments on subjects serious and inane.

Fashion - I'm really not that into hiker style. I do like it when the red socks bunch up on top of the boots, and everybody loves flannel, but that's about it. I don't like this whole 'nature-immunity' angle. People don't look rugged anymore, they look like space explorers. So I have a confession, which is that I bought my footwear more for style than for practicality. Doc Martens, I figured the price tag would somehow translate into comfort. Turns out they weren't really hiking boots at all, they were more like prehistoric stone monuments to the hiking boot, or as one American guy joked, 'mall-cruising boots'. Yeah, fuck you. I learned that each extra pound you carry on your feet is the equivalent of five pounds on your back, which means that I carried somewhere between eighty and five thousand pounds from Glasgow to Fort William. I think that makes me awesome.

Scotland - Let's see. First, they drive on the wrong side of the road, which has nearly spelled d-o-o-m for me on several occasions. I'm already bad at crossing the street, it doesn't help to always look the wrong way. Also, they drink a lot of beer. This accords well with my own disposition. I was greatly cheered to find absolutely every single person drinking a pint on lunch breaks. They like to eat about three different things, all of them dead animals. Breakfast is a triumph. And yes, everyone wears kilts, all the time.

Braveheart - Starring Mel Gibson and Gandalf the Grey, this VHS cassette afforded me the happiest hours of my young-adulthood. Now that I find myself in the ancestral homelands of William Wallace, and when I think about how it was based on a true story, I feel that I have fallen in love with Gibson's sad face all over again. Truly, of all the peoples of the earth, the British are the most thoroughly evil.

Chocolate bars - are delicious.

The Highlands - The reason the highlands look so bare is because they cut down all the trees. If you can imagine, all these hills and mountains used to be covered with deciduous trees, but when they cut them down erosion made it impossible for them to grow back. The last three or four days of the walk were entirely in the big empty highlands, and what I noticed most strongly is the quietness. Nothing for the wind to push around. Except for the weird honking wail of the sheep, there is no sound.

Burns - This is what Scottish people call streams. It's like calling bonfires 'soaks'.

Socializing - When Scottish people talk to each other they make quips, which are like jokes. They razz each other. Unfortunately I don't know how to make quips, so I don't feel as popular as I'd hoped to be in Scotland. I really wanted to be loved and celebrated, but I fear the Scots are ambivalent toward me at best. For now I'm trying to get by with repeating what people say back to them.