You Take the High Road…

A year ago last October, my wife and I visited our son and daughter-in-law in Rochester, New York. Of course, we went to Niagara Falls. While the three of them hiked up and down the cliffs and rode a boat through the falls’ majestic mist, I sat on a park bench with a partial view of one of the world’s greatest wonders and could do no more than let its soft roar and heavy concussion pulse through me.

My knee hurt so much I could hardly walk.

A year later, this past October, my wife and I met another son and daughter-in-law, along with our teenage granddaughter and grandson, in Edinburgh, Scotland. They live in Bonn, Germany, just a couple of blocks from the Rhine River. We don’t get to see them often. This time, we decided to meet in Scotland for a week together in a place we had all dreamed of visiting someday.

Someday had finally come. It was the perfect trip. Travel connections were smooth and efficient. We got to spend focused and treasured time with our loved ones. My son did all the driving on the wrong side of the road. We saw places and things we’d dreamed of seeing all our lives. It didn’t rain until the day we left. And, most important of all, I could walk.

The difference between the two Octobers was the knee replacement surgery I had in March. It took several months to recover, but by October I was ready to stand on my own two feet and walk about the Isle of Skye with no pain. For that, I’m indebted to my orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Randy Clark, and his excellent staff at Revere Health, and to a whole corps of physical therapists who dragged and talked me through all the contortions it took to get back on my feet.

The difference between those two October adventures was night and day. These days, I possess a deeper empathy and respect for the physically disabled. I realize now what a gift it is to be mobile. I value it, appreciate it, and wonder why it was so easy to take for granted.

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been haunted by the sound of bagpipes. I think that’s what fed the longing in me to go to Scotland. I know there’s some Scottish DNA in my genes, though most of my lineage is through Switzerland, Denmark, and Mother England. But I guess those Scottish strands carry a lot of weight, and I was not disappointed when I finally made it there.

I can imagine no place where story and landscape are more intertwined. We stayed with the MacDonald family in their home on the Isle of Skye for three days. From our bedroom window, we could see an inlet from the Atlantic Ocean, and from there, our eyes traced the Highland skyline up and up and up into the perfect white clouds of an ice-blue sky. I wondered about that landscape and wished I could know the stories that came from it.

I asked Mrs. MacDonald if it was public land, like our open spaces in the United States. She smiled and, in her delightful brogue, informed me that everything we could see was MacDonald land.

“We’ve [the MacDonald Clan] had the run of this place for four hundred years,” she said.

Regardless of who it belonged to, it was breathtakingly majestic, and I could have spent weeks there hiking into its bonnie glens on my brand-new knee.

We stayed one night on the shore of Loch Lomond, and I spent an early morning hour on the deck imagining Rob Roy coming down through the heather to the edge of the lake from the steep Highland ridges that surround it. I thought how we Americans are just as awe-struck by the Scottish Highlands and the likes of Rob Roy, Mary Queen of Scots, Robert the Bruce, and William Wallace as modern Scots are with a place like Zion National Park and the likes of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Most of it, on both sides of the ocean, is myth. But it’s that haunting connection of story and place that squeezes us into the cramped economy seats of 747s and sends us crossing each other over the Atlantic in search of something we can’t quite define.

When I was a little kid, I told my mom I wanted to play the bagpipes. My dear mom looked far and wide for a set but never found one. It’s just as well she didn’t. I settled for bongo drums and a guitar. But sixty years later, I spent my first several days in Scotland looking for a bagpipe shop. We didn’t find one until we got to Stirling, and there, the bagpipe maker spent a long time telling me all about the instrument. It was fascinating and tempting, but I resisted buying a set. And it’s just as well I didn’t—my Santa Clara neighbors can be grateful I resisted.

We took a mystical boat ride on Loch Ness. Much to my grandchildren’s distress, we did not sight the monster. I chuckled as I thought of all those Scottish visitors hiking the forests of the American Northwest who were having no more luck than we were in their search for Bigfoot.

We took a long, steep walk up the hill to Stirling Castle. Once I reached it, I sat down next to a man who spoke in a strong accent. It wasn’t Scottish, though. He was from South Carolina. He’d recently retired. He and his wife had come to Scotland on their dream trip. As we talked, we discovered we were the same age. He told me he had barely made it up the hill to the castle.

We took a long, steep walk up the hill to Stirling Castle. Once I reached it, I sat down next to a man who spoke in a strong His knee was in such pain he didn’t know how he would get back down. In fact, his wife was off looking for a wheelchair to carry him down to the train.

You can guess where the conversation went from there.