Day 1: The Trossachs

We are landing again on the southwestern tip of Iceland, one year and one month later. This time, the sun is already rising, and from the airplane window I can see it cresting the mountain ranges and moss-covered lava plains that lead to the island's interior. As we disembark onto the tarmac, I feel the fresh morning air admixed with a flurry of ice descending out of a completely clear, warm sky. It is good to be back north.

This time, we are destined to never leave the airport terminal. We buy two cups of skyr and a pair of ham sandwiches, and munch as we wait for our short flight into Glasgow. Most of the planning for this trip has taken place over the past year, but my minor obsession with the Scottish highlands and islands dates back to high school, when KT Tunstall was making waves in the continental music scene and before the Skye Bridge was toll-free. I remember this because the Isle of Skye was the first place I looked for when Google Maps was launched, and I can recall staring dumbfounded at its topography, plotting driving routes from the south, and thinking, "Yeah, that'll never happen..."

Almost a decade later, I am three weeks from receiving my medical degree, and we are pulling out of a Glasgow airport parking lot in a shiny diesel-engine Mercedes Benz, which the Hertz representative swears is a free upgrade. Quite atypically, we take out an insurance policy. "Drive on the left," he says helpfully. (We will become quite used to this phrase over the next ten days. Translated from the native Scotch: "Have a lovely trip, y'bloody Yanks!")

I am fine driving on the left after New Zealand, but I still manage to give Jane a few blood pressure spikes as we leave the airport, where each country's most convoluted roundabouts and traffic flow patterns are always conveniently located. We drive north out of Glasgow, stopping first for groceries at the Morrison's in Dumbarton. Loaded down with juice boxes, chocolate milk, a bag of clementines, tuna and sweetcorn sandwiches, and several bags of sausage rolls and mini-pies, we continue on toward Loch Lomond National Park; it is just past noon. We soon turn from the highway onto a two-lane country road. Jane is fast asleep as we wind through the mountainous eastern half of the park, through the raised meadows and old fir forest glens of the Trossachs. Just beyond The Duke's Pass and on the north shore of Loch Achray, we arrive at the trailhead for our single walk of the day - a 3-mile climb up to the summit of Ben A'an ("Pointed Peak" in Gaelic).  Jane sleeps an extra ten minutes while I try to figure out how to use the pay machine in the parking lot.

We set off on the diversion route toward Ben A'an (the regular route has been closed for the past year due to repairs and forestry activities). Here, there are no trail blazes and, most of the time, no obviously maintained path. Jane quickly finds herself mired in mud; we will both come out of this trip with a healthy upgrade to our pathfinding skills and our ability to navigate boggy terrain.  Boots sucking and squishing in the peat, we proceed through the upland forest. The trail soon climbs along rocky dirt slopes with the aid of hand-ropes tied between tree trunks. Just over a mile in, we turn onto the original track up the mountainside. Below the main body of the mountain, we reach a clearing with beautiful views of Ben Venue to our southwest and the woodlands to our south.  We stop to hydrate and watch a group of walkers play with their dogs, before starting the final climb up a tall, stone staircase.

Jane climbs ahead as the grade steepens, and I realize that I am not nearly as in shape as I want to be. At some point a fluffy gold terrier bypasses both of us, happily leaping from stone to stone, its belly fur matted with dirt and mud. It takes a liking to Jane and waits for her to catch up before proceeding, turning around every few steps to watch her with ears perked.  It is adorable but humiliating; we are being outclassed on the mountain by a ten-pound lap dog. Near the summit, we crest the spine of the mountain to reach a cairn site with sweeping views of Loch Katrine to our west, surrounded by an amphitheater of wooded hills and heathery mountains. It is mid-afternoon, and sun shines down in spotlights across the lake and on patches of barren hillside. Our friend the terrier watches me set up my camera gear before catching sight of its owners and running up the mountainside. We take some photos together before continuing to the summit, where there are a few hikers sitting among the rocky crags.

Back in the car, Jane promptly falls asleep as I drive us north to the village of Crianlarich. On the outskirts of the village, across a fenced-off plot of pastureland at the foot of the mountains, we pull off the highway into a long driveway lined with bright golden daffodils, which leads to a charmingly rustic, two-story house nestled into the hillside. As we park our car and step out, we hear the tinkling of the little creek in the glen beside the house; smoke is drifting out of the chimney, and the sun is setting on the moss-tiled roof. After filling out our breakfast card, we spend the night at the Inverardran House, where we sleep very, very well.

Day 2: West Highlands

The next morning, we wake to a full breakfast of coffee and tea, juice, milk, and toast; bacon and sausage, fried eggs, grilled tomatoes and mushrooms, baked beans, and grilled slices of black pudding. I have never had the latter, but it is delicious - crunchy, and reminiscent of but more strongly flavored than Taiwanese pork blood cakes made with rice. Our innkeeper is evidently impressed by my culinary openness. "Next you'll be movin' rae on to haggis, no?" he says with a hearty guffaw. "We'll see about that," I say cautiously. After breakfast, we bid farewell to our host ("Drive on the left!" "We'll try!") and load up the car.

Leaving Crianlarich, we continue north over a mountain pass and into a broad glacial valley. The hilly forests of the Trossachs are now behind us, with the exception of the occasional clearcut stand of young pine trees lining a hilltop, its boundaries neat and sharp. The road curves through a wide expanse of moorland dotted with eutrophic lakes and lone trees, a landscape so flat and desolate that the distant mountain glens seem to tower over us from miles away. We stop at several places on the roadside, and climb a small hill with an eastern view. Below us, Rannoch Moor stretches far away across the western highlands, an endless wasteland of peat and bog that, on foot, would take you halfway across the breadth of Scotland in three days. We watch the fishermen on the banks of Loch Ba before continuing on.

We approach the mouth of Glen Coe, the glacial trough that connects the West Highlands with the sea lochs to the north, a relic of an ancient tendril of ice not unlike the ones now carving out the highlands of Iceland.  This is a valley steeped in the history of the highland clans, an enduring symbol of avarice and betrayal after the massacre of the MacDonald clan by Campbell clansmen as the former sought shelter with the latter during a winter snowstorm. It is an ancient home of a now-displaced, proud people - a place of incredible pain and beauty.

Off a side road, we stop the car under the mighty Buchaille Etive Mòr ("The Great Shepherd of Etive"), the imposing guardian of the east entrance to the Glen. At the foot of the mountain, we creep down to the riverbed, and I take some long exposures of the stream where it trickles and gives tribute to the River Etive, which then flows through Glen Etive to the southwest.

Back on the highway, we head into Glen Coe proper, a valley nestled between the massif of Bideam nan Bian ("Peak of the Mountains") to the south, and the imposing rock wall of Aonach Eagach ("The Devil's Ridge") to the north. We leave the car at the trailhead and join the path that cuts through the glen. A bagpiper is playing at the parking lot overlooking the landscape, the instrument's mighty blasts echoing up and down the valley. On a footbridge, we cross over the River Coe and soon begin climb out of the valley. Past a gate in the sheeps' fence, we continue upriver along a steep, wooded ravine between the eastern two of the Three Sisters: Beinn Fhada ("Long Hill") and Gearr Aonach ("Short Ridge"). Passing waterfalls and stream crossings, we skirt the cliffs, hopping over granite boulders and glacial erratic as we go.

Near the top of the ravine, the path narrows into another stone staircase. Jane climbs ahead (again I am gasping for air) and soon disappears over a shoulder of rock. I follow;  suddenly, the staircase terminates and, in one of the most dramatic unveilings of landscape I have witnessed, the view opens into Coire Gabhail ("The Corrie of the Bounty"), a glacial cirque nestled in the heart of the mountain massif. An ancient landslide blockaded the valley entrance, forming a hanging mountain lake that, over time, bled out of the ravine we just ascended. The result is a flat alluvial plain hidden high and deep within the mountains, accessible only by a narrow cliff path from the bottom of Glen Coe - hence its English name, the Lost Valley. Its Gaelic name stems from its use by Clan MacDonald - as a hiding spot for cattle and livestock pilfered from surrounding settlements (and then as a human hiding spot after their 1692 massacre). Still catching my breath from the climb, I struggle to imagine leading a herd of cattle up the ravine path.  A light flurry of snow, alternating in true northern fashion with glorious beaming sunshine,  begins to blow down from the mountains. We sit and admire this lonely, beautiful place, letting the tiny flakes of snow cool our faces. After awhile, we begin our return descent. It is much more pleasant than the climb, with the distant bagpipe slowly fading in nearly a mile away, and views all the way across the glen to the A82 highway, looking ever-so-tiny beneath the mountain walls.

Continuing west, we exit the glen and stop by St. John's Church in the tiny village of Ballachulish. We walk through the cemetery and enjoy the view of the loch beyond the church; it is still too early to see the bluebells which carpet the church grounds and bloom in early May. Heading north now, we cross a bridge over a sea loch and enter the town of Fort William a little past noon. We stop again at Morrison's, re-supplying with sandwiches, juice boxes, and dessert pastries. In the back seat of the car, I munch on a BLT while Jane eats a tuna sandwich. We finish off lunch with a few clementines before continuing north on the A82. Jane falls asleep (again) as I drive us across the western highlands, passing silver-blue lochs and tawny hillsides covered with patches of clear-cut forest. At Invergarry, we turn west onto the A87, which runs to Kyle of Lochalsh, across the Skye Bridge, and ultimately to the northernmost tip of Skye. The route feels strangely familiar to me - the one that I so feverishly plotted back in high school. "I can't believe we're doing this," I remember thinking in the car. "We're going to Skye."

But not yet. At Shiel Bridge, we turn off the highway, onto an old, one-lane road that was used for transporting troops and materiel during the Jacobite uprising, and for centuries before that, for driving sheep and cattle along the ancient road to Skye. We creep up the winding mountain road through the Ratagan Pass; I become proficient at flicking the headlights on and off (the controls are located away from the steering wheel in the Benz), to signal oncoming cars that I will wait for them in a turn-off, and that they have the right of way. We stop at a mountainside viewpoint which looks out over Loch Duich and the Five Sisters of Kintail, before continuing down into the valley and toward the village of Glenelg.

On the outskirts of the village, we turn into a gravel driveway at the Balcraggie House, a lovely two-story building surrounded by sheep pastures and a little yard with a tire tree swing. Before I even turn off the engine, we are greeted by our hostess Donna Stiven and Bessie, her Scottish collie.  She shows us to our upstairs room, with its lovely blue walls, bookshelves covered with novels, and electric fireplace. We drop off our bags and get a drink of water. Donna confirms our dinner reservation at the Glenelg Inn and looks over our afternoon walking route before we head out again. In the yard, Bessie runs after us and perches herself up on the stone wall by the side of the road,  herding cars as well as sheep.

We continue on into Glenelg, driving south on the one-lane village road as it winds along the western coast of the Scottish mainland. Across the kyle (narrow strait), the Red Hills of Skye rise up over the horizon, silhouetted by the falling afternoon sun.  We pass cute little white houses, fishing boats, and a backyard with an emu. A few miles south of the village,  we stop on the side of a forestry road and begin our walk down to the bay of Sandaig (Norse "sand bay"). We walk along the forestry gravel path, around and down a bleak hillside of recently clearcut forest. A few European swifts flit about the path as we walk, looking for home among the felled logs; the view opens up, and a grey heron flies overhead as we descend toward the sea. The path brings us around and over the bay, and we come at last upon the place that author Gavin Maxwell made his home. He called this Camusfeàrna (bay of alders), and he retreated here for nearly two decades to commune with the nature of Scotland's western coast, raise a succession of otter companions, and chronicle his life in the Ring of Bright Water trilogy. I read Ring approximately one year ago, when we first began planning for this trip, and in a way, we are here solely because of it. I wanted to see the quiet, little place that Maxwell grew so attached to, because in Maxwell's writing, I discerned something that I know very well from my own life:  that landscape can change a person, mold his dreams and aspirations, and grant powerful perspective on his place in and relation to the rest of the world.

We descend to the shore and walk through the wild grass around the abandoned bothy in the southern corner of the bay (not Maxwell's cottage, which burned down in1968).  Jane walks across the field to inspect the gravestone under which Maxwell's ashes are buried, next to a lone pine tree (replacing the famous rowan tree which also burned down) under which his otter Edal is buried. Upon Edal's stone is inscribed the following: "'Whatever joy she gave to you, give back to Nature.' - Gavin Maxwell." The stone is covered by scallop shells, limpet shells, smoothly rounded stones from the sea; old ship rope, a conch, a dreamcatcher. Items foraged from the coastline, just as Maxwell would have done. Jane inspects these silently as I walk back toward the bay. We stand together on the shoreline, watching the quiet, tiny waves lap up on the sand, at the place where the stream surrounding the cove, like a "ring of bright water", curves into the sea. The waterfall which feeds into the stream, somewhere out of view in the valley behind us, roars steadily, constantly, and gently; Maxwell wrote, "It is the waterfall, rather than the house, that has always seemed to me the soul of Camusfeàrna," and I can understand now why he felt so.

In hindsight, I should have proposed to Jane here, in a quiet, secluded bay with the waterfall roaring and my tripod set up far, far away. But the ring box is sitting in my bag at the Balcraggie House, so we stand for awhile, watching the sun set, before crossing the stream and returning uphill via a (not-so-)forested path. I film Jane as she crosses clumsily via a rope bridge; she gets the last laugh as I slip and plunge my entire boot into the running water. Soggy socks in tow, we head back to Glenelg for dinner.

At the Glenelg Inn, we find the table that Donna has reserved for us, and we order starters of mackerel pate and fresh scallops from Skye; main courses of seared monkfish and slow-roasted cheek of beef. It is a welcome change from tuna sandwiches, grocery store pastries, and juice boxes. At the bar, an acoustic band is playing covers of KT Tunstall, and a blackboard on the wall advertises the inn's weekly Sunday roast. We enjoy our candlelit dinner before returning home. At the Balcraggie House, I hang my socks up to dry by the electric fireplace. Donna treats us to a pot of evening tea with homemade chocolate cake; we sit beside the fireplace in Donna and Ed's living room, over which is mounted a massive antique longsword. We chat with our hosts about Scotland, America, and American politics ("Oh, we are just as shocked and angry," we assure them regarding Donald Trump). I flip through a book of Scottish landscape photography while Jane, apparently feeling some level of inspiration, begins to read Ring of Bright Water. At 10 PM, feeling the wear of a long day, we retire upstairs, and I go to sleep while Jane continues to read.

Day 3: Skye I

It's chilly when we awaken the next day.  The electric fireplace has been running through the night, and the condensation on the window is glowing with the early morning sun coming up over the sheep pastures. Downstairs, Donna has laid out a spread of toast, fruit, and yogurt at the dining table in the living room, and she prepares a hearty breakfast of grilled mushrooms, tomatoes, freshly farmed eggs, and grilled shoulder bacon. Bessie runs in and out of the room, checking on our progress as attentively as a fancy restaurant waiter, while the cat sits stoically a few inches away from a space heater next to the fireplace.  Donna comes over to chat with us, and is understandably disappointed that our whirlwind itinerary is taking us out of Glenelg and over the water to Skye. She suggests that we at least drive down the road to Glen Beag, to see two of the largest and best-preserved brochs (Iron Age stone dwellings) on the Scottish mainland, before catching the ferry from Glenelg to Kylerhea.  She and her husband were married inside one of the brochs, so fond were they of its history and stately charm; she shows us an album of photos from her wedding day.

We take her up on her advice.  Continuing east on the single-track road south of the village, we drive along another valley lined by pastures, pine forests, and a single feathery waterfall. We stop to watch the flocks of sheep with their new spring lambs (photo below), who ram their wooly heads into one another and skip awkwardly after their mothers. The herd suddenly takes off running along the fence, chasing after a pickup truck headed in the opposite direction. The driver hops out and pulls a big bag of feed from the truck bed. Breakfast.

At Dun Telve, we unlatch the sheep gate and walk in along the fence, admiring the circular, drystone tower. It is perhaps 30 feet tall and hollow, with walls several feet thick in some places. We walk into its center and look up, seeing little stone ledges - remains of a staircase, or perhaps room partitions. It is uncertain what structures like these, dating back several thousand years and built by the Pictish tribes, were used for - perhaps defensive structures, watchtowers, or high-class residences. A formidable chunk of human history sitting in a idyllic little valley on the Scottish coast.

After seeing the brochs, we drive back through the village and north to the ferry crossing, where the a hand-cranked turntable ferry - the Glenachulish, the last of its kind in the world - still shuttles passengers back and forth across the narrow strait to Skye on the half-hour in the warmer months. Dating back to the 1600s and previously the one true route "over the sea to Skye", the Kylerhea ferry came upon leaner times with the opening of the Skye Bridge in 1995, and is now community-owned and operated - another piece of living Scottish history for our morning. We watch at the dock as the boat pulls in, its wooden deck spinning steadily into position. I drive Diesel onto the boat. On board, Jane and I hop out of the car, savoring the breeze for the entire five-minute ride across the water. It is not how I envisioned reaching Skye ten years ago, but Donna was absolutely right: there is something magical about doing it the old way.

Across the water, we drive through the little village of Kylerhea and turn uphill to reach the car park for the wildlife sanctuary. We walk in, less than a mile through the pine woods on an easy gravel path, to an indoor hide that is popular with locals as a whale and porpoise and otter-watching spot. Binoculars to our faces, we watch the grey seals swimming around the rocks on the beach below, while the Glenachulish and its boat horn make their laps across the narrows.

Leaving Kylerhea and Skye's eastern coast, I drive us along the twisting, single-lane canyon road over the Kylerhea River. Jane falls asleep. After twenty minutes, we re-join the A87 and head west toward Broadford, pulling into the parking lot of the Skye Co-op in Broadford around noon. I wake Jane from her slumber ("Lunch. Pastries." "...Huh? Okay.") and we head into the grocery store and bakery, where we discover the wonders of the Portuguese egg tart, from which the Hong Kong egg tart (蛋撻; dàn tǎ) was derived. It is virtually identical to the dim sum dessert that I grew up loving, except that the top is generously carmelized, and it is available here and now, to two young Chinese-Americans vacationing on the Isle of Skye, for less than a dollar a pop. We buy out the bakery's stock (along with our usual sandwiches and drinks) and throw it in the car. Heading west on the island, we stop at the old stone bridge in the settlement of Sligachan before continuing on to Glenbrittle at the foot of the Skye's most imperious mountain range - the Black Cuilins.

From the busy car park at Glenbrittle, we set off on the footpath into the valley and toward the mountains. Walking east along the River Brittle, we hop over stones and waterfalls, passing alongside crystal-clear pools of blue and turquoise water, runoff from the heart of the Cuilins. As we continue, the waterfalls grow taller and the other day-trippers climbing the rocks and sunning by the pools become more sparse, while the mountains ahead grow taller and ever-more-imposing. The clear dirt path soon degenerates into a rough peat track across the heather moor. We continue to climb into the foothills.

At the foot of the Black Cuilins, we find ourselves in an amphitheater of mountains: Bruach na Frithe ("Slope of the Deer Forest") to our left,  Sgurr Thuilm ("Peak of the Hillock") to our right, and straight ahead, Sgurr an Fheadain ("Peak of the Chanter"), a pyramidal block of gabbro bisected by a deep cleft (Waterpipe Gully, one of the more technical rock climbs in the country). We scramble partway up the loose rock scree that leads into the mountains, and reach the entrance to Coire na Creiche ("Corrie of the Spoils"), the mountain cirque where the MacDonalds climactically defeated the remnants of Clan MacLeod in 1601, in the last such battle on Skye.

Turning away from the stream, we head north now, following the flanks of Bruach na Frithe toward Sligachan.  The way is muddy; in hindsight, we likely lost the walking path soon after reaching the corrie, and wind up following a less-beaten trail across the moor. Boots squishing in the mud, we peer ahead into the endless expanse of peat bog, trying to discern any signs of a path - a flattened patch of grass, an opening in the heather, a few scattered footsteps in the mud. There are no other humans for miles around, and it is mid-afternoon. Alone in a massive landscape, and acutely aware of the caprices of mountain weather, a very mild worry sets in. Jane suggests bee-lining across the moor back toward our car (we can still see the edge of the forest near the car park), but we are on the wrong side of the River Brittle, and the undulating landscape guarantees us running into some nasty terrain. We continue picking our steps across the slope, jumping up and down terraces of peat in order to find the least muddy way forward. At intervals, there is a small boulder beside our path; Jane hops on one to get a better look at our surroundings. At first I think they are just glacial erratics cast off from the mountain, but after awhile it becomes clear that they are trail markers, quite deliberately spaced. We are on a path, if not the right one.

After an hour of following boulders and vague intuition across the moor, we are vindicated by the sighting of another path up ahead, cutting east-to-west between Sligachan and Glenbrittle. We hop over one last pit of mud and scramble up the side of a waterfall, emerging gratefully onto a well-trodden gravel path. Turning left here, we walk along the other side of the river, passing around the edge of a forestry zone to connect back up with our original path. We return to the Glenbrittle car park around 4 PM, concluding an unexpectedly eventful six miles of walking in the south of Skye. Jane briefly takes over the driver's seat while I eat a Portuguese egg tart with a box of pineapple juice and half of a leftover sandwich.

Leaving Glen Brittle and the Cuilins behind, we drive north now along the west coast of Skye, taking the A863 toward Dunvegan. On a peninsula near Carbost, we get a magnificent view of the Atlantic Ocean and the minor islands to our west, glimmering under the afternoon sun. We continue, passing by villages, cottages, and little crofting communities. Near Bracadale we stop in a car park, and climb up a hill covered in sheep and little pellets of sheep dung. We arrive at the broch of Dun Beag, a massive stone fortification quite similar to the ones near Glenelg. Jane climbs to the top of the tower ruins and gazes out across the west of Skye, north to the Duirinish Peninsula and the pair of prominent mesas known as MacLeod's Tables. To our south is an open, gorgeous view back to the Minginish Peninsula and the Cuilins; the mountains continue to appear raw and imposing, even in the distance. As the sun begins to fall toward the horizon, we set off again toward our last stop of the day.

Just before Dunvegan, we turn west off the A863 onto a one-lane road the crosses the Duirinish Peninsula. We pass the villages of Colbost and Glendale (Jane is asleep again), and the road becomes somewhat more narrow and harrowing as the countryside gives way to sea cliffs and rocky Hebridean coastline. Near sunset, we arrive at the westernmost tip of Skye, a finger of rock pointing west across the Minch to the isles of Uist, Harris, and Lewis. We descend the cliff from the car park and walk across the headland toward the lighthouse on Neist Point. Jane stops to admire the colonies of gannets and black guillemots that inhabit the cliffs, breeding and nesting and artfully smearing their guano atop the pillars of hexagonal basalt. As the day ends, we take portraits together on the edge of a cliff near the lighthouse, the sea birds crying and flying through the air around us. In the distance, the Outer Hebrides are silhouetted by the setting sun, and I am reminded of the book Sea Room by Adam Nicolson, a Cambridge-educated author who, through a twist of fate, ends up owning the Shiants, a tiny set of Scottish isles somewhere out there in the Minch. His book, half family memoir and half work of love for his islands' geography, geology, flora, fauna, and human history, is what stays with me as I take the photos below, with the wind whipping and the sea birds flying overhead.

The sun has nearly reached the horizon when we return to the car park and drive back across the peninsula (the single lane road across the sea cliffs is no less harrowing in the diminishing light and with Jane awake). We finally return to the highway (it is around 8 PM at that time) and set off past Dunvegan and east across Skye at a blistering pace. The roads are nearly empty now, and despite the long day and the late hour, what follows is the best thirty minutes of driving in my life -  flying across the moors of central Skye,  wind turbines and farming villages all around us. The sky turns pink and then purple, and the open plains glow golden in the last bits of daylight. It is nearly dark when we reach the little settlement of Borve, on the outskirts of Portree (the large fishing town on the east coast of Skye). Our host for the night, Dougie at the Eubhal House, comes out to greet us as we pull into his driveway, a little gravel road next to a tractor behind a farm shed. He has been worried about us, and we apologize for our unexpectedly late arrival (we later realize that he emailed multiple times earlier in the evening, probably concerned that we were lost or had canceled our trip). Dougie shows us to our room, where we fill out breakfast cards and munch on our standard road dinner - sandwiches, juice, Scotch pies, and dessert pastries. Sitting in our country house, I gaze out the bedroom window, at the vast expanse of island landscape receding into the darkness. A truly memorable first day on Skye.