Getting Distilled in Scotland

Ok, I am back from mowing the weeds.

No, I didn't do it blade by blade with a rusty nail clippers. While you weren't looking, I slipped in a quick visit to Thing One in Chicago. But I now expect to keep my feet planted in my own backyard and just soak in everything I have learned from my wonderful travels in 2014.

So what did I learn in Scotland?

I planned this expedition because I yearned to know what it feels like to distill each day into its most simple of activities: putting one foot in front of the other. The first thing that happens is that decisions become very simple--and exquisitely meaningful.  

For example, since everything I put in my pack for the day was going to literally rest on my shoulders for at least 7 hours, I had to really weigh its ultimate value.If it wouldn't keep me dry in the rain, warm in the wind, full in the belly, or safe in an emergency, it got voted off the backpack.

Or put into Mr. E's.

Even the decision to take extra steps becomes consequential in a way that walking dogs through the playground across the street does not. I waged a constant internal battle when we needed to choose whether to go out of our way to see a site. On one hand, I would never be this close to blah blah blah again. On the other, my two feet were now my most important resource and I needed to conserve their well-being in the face of the 35,000 steps they had to tackle each day.  Looking back, this seems lame (hah) but at the time, it felt very, very serious. And so uncomplicated.  

Second, problems also become very simple--and solutions exquisitely meaningful. An overly tight left shoulder strap on my pack consumed my attention one entire afternoon.  And finally remembering to let that strap out and take up its counterpart on my hip was a Blessed Event.

Twelve miles with the tiniest of irritations in the tiniest of toes gives new meaning to one-pointedness meditation.

I worried all night about being able to continue hiking. But it happened that our home that night was in the only town on our route with a hiking gear store. And that the store would be open early Sunday morning when we wanted to get back on the trail. And that they stocked Compeed gel bandages...and that my traveling companion was a doctor who knows her way around meticulous bandaging!  Every morning after that, I made sure each toe had the protection it deserved...and every night, I inspected and treated any little malingerers.

And in a weird way, I loved that these 10 little guys were the focus of all my love and attention.

Speaking of attention, or lack of it,  let's talk about The Burn. You would think that Americans who read "after one mile, cross the Achmore Burn and turn right" would take the time to find out what the hell a burn is. Because if they don't, they will continue an extra mile only to find out from a nice Scottish lady on a bicycle that the Hiking Gods sent down to peddle past us that a "burn" is a creek. Then, they will have to go back the additional mile to get back on the trail. (See notes about step conservation, above.) That was really our only misstep over 7 days, which I'd like to think is a tribute to our our map-reading skills. But is probably because the Scottish hiking authorities had our backs.

  Finally, and as you might expect, our pleasures were simple--and exquisitely meaningful.

 

 

I'm feeling unable to distill this learning into the right words. In the end, it wasn't so much about simplicity but that the stuff that mattered REALLY mattered. If you didn't chart the nuances of the trail map (this is the bridge we just went over, it looks like we need to cross another creek and then there's an intersection), if you didn't make sure your toes and shoulders were happy (I need to get some more Compeed before the stores close), if you carelessly let the piece of paper with the name of the night's hotel disappear out of your pocket not once but twice  (oh wait, I did), well, you'd be lost,in acute pain, or pretty damn anxious about where you were going to sleep just as it started raining.

And I loved that. I guess it makes sense that in Scotland, I discovered the power of a distilled life.
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PS and on a different note.  I promised you Cullen Skink. The servers all pronounced it "Cullen Skank." So when you mix that with a few rounds of single malt, you get into an uproar about all the sailors who knew her. (Go grab some scotch, it will get funny, I promise.) Those who are not drinking, however, recognize Cullen Skink like this:
Speciality of the northeast Scottish coast, it is delicious soup made with cream (of course), smoked haddock, and potatoes.

Seven Days, 101.84 Miles, and 236,261 Steps

That's how my pedometer describes my walk through Scotland's Rob Roy Way. A walk that took us through (start singing now) the high roads...

 ...through the low roads...

And smack through the middle of the extraordinary election for Scottish independence from Great Britain!

 

 On the side of the road, we thought we met an elf who had way too much static electricity.

He told us a story about his fabulous sweater, which his mum made for him when he was eight. It developed a hole when he was 14 and he darned it. And he has never stopped darning it. He told us his name was Malcolm Applebee, which, he said, we could google. I did and expected to find he had escaped from somewhere. I didn't expect to find he was an MBOE and an award-winning engraver!

There were several other signs to add to my collection, too.

My mother wanted to know if this meant slow down...or speed up.

 And just in case you wondered exactly where the Universe got started...

Like Scotland itself, the hike was a largely a sheepfest.

The trail wound us through many pastures, each with signs requesting that we "do not worry the sheep." That's because, near as I can see, sheep as a species are already dangerously overwrought. They're a bunch of old ladies, wringing their wooly little hands dawn to dusk and just begging for some Xanax.

In their defense, they do have something to worry about.

The other animals were much more at one with the Universe.

And finally, the forests themselves were full of things I had never seen before. An old hag made out of lichen...

 A man-sized termite mound...

 A storybook array of funghi...

 

And this.

So that's the sights. When I return from mowing the weeds, I'll tell you about what it felt like...and everything you need to know about the Drum of Clashmore, the Wee Burn, and, of course, Cullen Skink.

Me and the Hassidic Rabbi of Ger

"The human being is called a 'walker,' having to go from one step to another. For habit makes things reflexive and this hides the inner light...Whoever stands still is not renewed..."

                                                                        Hassidic teaching, circa 1902

That's from Rabbi Yehudah Leib Alter of Ger, a Polish rebbe who died in 1905. And, yep, that's what was in the Hebrew pages I had to decode for my text class the day after I returned home from hiking with E in Israel.

The hike was definitely about renewal. First, in hiking 10 to 12 miles daily over four days, I remembered with every muscle how trekking has fed my soul since I was a youngster in wilderness camp. Don't you think that which we love in childhood is that which our most authentic self loves? For me, its vanilla ice cream, pine forests, dogs, and the sound of my boots crunching on the trail.

So it was the happiest of reunions to find each other again. [Insert commercial for orthopedic surgeon and artificial knee prosthesis here.]

But it was also about the freshest of new experiences. The Greatest Hits.

Traversing cliff ridges gripping wires and descending via six inch metal rungs... walking alone in a banana grove to suck some shade while belting out the Chiquita Banana song at the top of my lungs...munching on fallen grapefruit in a citrus grove...falling asleep to the fireworks and gunfire that are how Arab villagers celebrate weddings, in a hostel made from the ruins of an Ottoman palace...Scanning every rock,bush and tree for that damned orange and white trail marker...touching the stone of the nook that held the Torah in the ruins of a second century synagogue. Fresh pomegrantes. Even fresher pita.

And our fellow hikers...well, those gentle souls from Australia, Denmark, Germany and the southern US will get their own post soon.

Jesus played no part in my choice to hike The Jesus Trail, but its geography will forever alter how I feel about what I read in the bible. Because this is geography you can feel. Even at its end, the Israeli summer is about sun that can eat you alive. When you feel a journey like this:

You truly understand the magic of this.

How a well was what a Food and Gas Ahead sign is on the long stretch of highway after midnight. How shade, just simple shade, could be the cornerstone of hospitality.

Our journey started in the ancient market in Nazareth and ended on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee. I wished then--and feel it even more now--that I could have kept on going. To walk from point to point as determined by where there is water, listening to the crunch of my boots on the stones and clay shards of an ancient landscape.

But my life is also about Himself, who blew through 36 barbequed chicken thighs and then defrosted a banana bread instead of a turkey meatloaf for his supper (which apparently didn't cause any real change in his dinner plans, except that he didn't have to search for the ketchup).He only likes to hike if there is no other way to get to an intriguing destination.

So I find myself torn between Himself and the Rabbi Yehudah Leib Alter of Ger. He wrote the quote at the beginning of this post. And here's how he ended it:

"The angels above can stand. But the person has to keep walking." 

Things could get serious between us.                                             

לְהִתרָאוֹת

It says "l'hitraot." That's Hebrew slang for "see you later."

In a few hours, I'll be on my way with E to Israel. We will visit friends, binge on hummus and pita almost out-of-the-oven fresh, and, oh yeah, take a four-day walk.

Its called "The Jesus Trail," and you can read about it here.We're going on our own, with the added convenience of the trail folks shlepping our stuff from guest house to guest house. (I love hiking, not hauling.)

For many people around the world, this trail offers a chance to experience religious pilgrimage. For me, it is a pilgrimage, but of a different sort. It is a victory lap, a chance to remind myself why I went through the total knee replacement surgery in the first place. A chance to feel the person I love being. And to do it in the company of my BFF, even if she goes at such a fast clip that I'm sure I'll be Wiley E. Coyote in her Road Runner cartoon.

I prepared myself by reading Zealot, which is an incredibly well written look at the historical Jesus and the world he lived in. And by augmenting my pretty decent conversational Hebrew skills with  important phrases like "excuse me, have you seen an orange trail marker anywhere?"


And because Apple makes sure that ipads can't play nicely with Google Blogger, I'll be back in about two weeks.