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.
