Out of the Fairy Pools and Into Rushing Waters

Monday, June 19, 2017

The family slept late. A grey, gloomy, raining sky greeted them as they walked out of the door of 11 Stormy Hill Road. But a hot breakfast at the Arriba Cafe in Portree warmed their stomachs. B and TwoSon ate sugar-studded waffles; AJ had what the English called a “full breakfast,”: Black pudding, Irish Lorne, fried tomato, baked beans, bacon (more Canadian than American) and sausage. 

In her mind's eye, The End, leaving, and the long plane ride home was in sight and though AJ was tired, she kinda didn’t want to leave. She already knew she would be going back with a new perspective; witness to the sights, sounds and feelings culled from her itinerary and reactions. She had learned a lot. She discovered she wasn’t good at helping B out of hairy, left-hand driving situations on one-lane roads because she panicked and made the situation worse. She discovered that B was a very good driver, and that challenges–rain when you needed sun, streams where there should be trails, narrow when you needed wide, hurry when you wanted leisure–and planning and re-planning were what made trips exciting and interesting. 

After packing their bags and loading the car, they set out for their first stop of the day, and last hike on the Isle of Skye: The Fairy Pools. The sun was shining and they had bugspray. 

But the biting, haggling midges were mostly undeterred by bugspray, so the only thing to do was to move. After carefully squeezing the car into the only empty parking space in the gravel lot, the family started on the trail that climbed along the Fairy Pools. The first and biggest challenge of the trail was to cross a decent-sized stream, which obligated the hikers in getting their feet wet. 

Mist-capped mountains surrounded a sloping valley which was dissected by a large stream that stepped down ledges, making water falls and pools along the way. The ground and even the rock-strewn trail was spongy under their feet due to the peat underlying everything. Every so many meters, the trail traversed smaller streams that intersected the path on their way to join the Fairy Pools in the River Allt Coir' a' Mhadaidh. 

AJ and TwoSon were more than willing to walk and wait, walk and wait, as B filled the camera’s memory card with pictures. They left B and Tripod to walk ahead on the trail, stopping at times to admire the spectacle. The water, rushing, roaring over rocks, fell elegantly down ledges, stopping at deep, clear pools, swirling there a while, as if to rest before continuing their way down mountain. 

Unlike humans and CS Lewis’s Natural Human Law (see Human Law, Left-Driving, and Churches, Castles and Homes), the water followed, to the T, the law of water, and the law of gravity; it waited its turn in glistening, mesmerizing pools before following its course down the mountain, happy, willing and full of energy like the sheep dogs reveling in their work at the Old Man of Storr.

These rushing waters were comforting, awe-inspiring, invigorating, though not dismal like the “rushing waters” of people AJ had experienced in the train stations and airports. 

The difference was, sitting along these rushing waters, she need not go in or join the cheerful chaos, she was free to sit by and watch it all happen. Both kinds of rushing water were marvels: the organized migration of people from scattered regions to densely populated business and metropolitan areas, and the migration of many gravity fueled streams rushing to one spot.  

AJ preferred the Fairy Pools. It would have been interesting to watch the rushing waters of humanity in the London Tube and train stations, but there usually was no time for it and from what she saw, people rarely did it. 

"Flower in the Crannied Wall*"

They stopped at Sligachan Hotel and Restaurant on their way off the Isle of Skye where B snuck out to take more pictures of the Sligachan Old Bridge while AJ and TwoSon waited for a good hot lunch, much needed after walking in the cool wind all morning. 

AJ had had her sour (London), then her sweet (Scotland’s sheepy hills, raveny mountain rock outcroppings, countrysides, and small towns), and now she must have her sour again, even if a little bit, in Edinburgh (Edin-boro). 

Outside the tangled snare of roads into the city, the highway to Edinburgh was wide and pleasant, with a notable lack of billboards or advertisements crowding the highways like in the US. 

Trying to get B directions into a city with myriad turns and roundabouts was harrowing and circuitous, but eventually, they made it to 11-12 Royal Terrace, sitting among a row of beautiful Georgian townhouses, in front of an extraordinarily wide brick street, with an expansive park-like area in front and behind. It was a breath of wide open in a town where AJ expected squooshed and squeezed living quarters, as in London. 

Edinburgh at night

After checking into their room, which was at one time an exquisitely placed and decorated sitting room, the host showed them their bathroom (not en-suite, but down the hall a little ways), the family set out on an evening walking tour of the town. 

The stone buildings sat heavy and old, uniform in their general architecture, except for a few shiny, new, glassy structures sticking out amongst them. Edinbourgh Castle perched upon a hill looking over the city of shops, homes, brick-lined streets, bars, university students and tourists. It was a nice town, though AJ wasn’t comfortable, and she fought against fatigue to understand the opportunity that lay all around her. 

What she didn’t realize was that Edinburgh was home at one time to some of her most favorite authors, like Robert Louis Stevenson (Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes (see Painting a Deck with Robert Louis Stevenson and a Donkey), Treasure Island, An Inland Voyage), Sir Conan Doyle of Sherlock Holmes fame, Kenneth Grahame (The Wind in the Willows), and Sir Walter Scott (Rob Roy, etc). And JK Rowling wrote there, too. 

AJ and TwoSon followed B as he visited prime photography spots, to strange old streets, nooks and crannies in the town. Before turning in for the night, he sent AJ and TwoSon back to the room while he snapped photos from the park behind their bed and breakfast.

*Flower in the Crannied Wall

Flower in the crannied wall, 

I pluck you out of the crannies, 

I hold you here, root and all, in my hand, 

Little flower–but if I could understand 

What you are, root and all, and all in all, 

I should know what God and man is. 

–Lord Alfred Tennyson