Great Glen Way - Day 2

Saturday April 15. From Gairlochy to South Laggan. The official estimate was 13 miles and my iPhone concurs!

Ah friends. I am sitting in the dining room of the Forest Lodge in South Laggan. I decided that when I am hiking for three weeks I am allowed to break my sugar fast and did I choose a great moment to do so. I am eating the most delicious ginger cake imaginable with a thick “pouring cream.” Part of the decision to break my fast was not wanting to refuse any part of the wonderful hospitality of the two women, Laura and Lorraine, who own Forest Lodge. They reminded me immediately of our good friends and neighbors Bea and Cindy, and like them they are former teachers. Owning this B&B is their dream come true and they radiate joy in every small act of hospitality. Who could resist tasting their ginger cake? Although Lorraine would immediately correct me and say that it is Laura’s cake, that she herself is not a cook. 

It was an easy day. It began with a leisurely breakfast - and it was actually a great pleasure to be waited on rather than to go through the buffet. The food was all freshly prepared and delicious, including my first genuine Scottish porridge, which I loved.  Not only was the day sunny, but also the sky was totally clear when we started out. Here is the view looking back at the mountains behind me. 

Actually this is looking back along the canal, which I accidentally starting walking along, then had to turn back and find the Great Glen Way, which veered off away from the canal. The canal was yesterday. Today was Lochy Loch. 

And along Lochy Loch I felt especially touched by the trees, standing between me and the water, partly in bright sunlight and partly in shadow  

They stand there, doing that strange motionless understated dance that trees seem to do with one another - their trunks bending and curving very slightly, very subtly and yet seductively, like a dancer moving a shoulder or a hip just a tiny bit, suggestively.  Beckoning. Bodies talking to one another. 

Most of the photos I like from today are of trees. Trees and their shadows, curving along the contours and curves of the earth. 

Somehow I liked this more mechanical trailer thing in the foreground, it’s straight lines and right angles contrasting with the trees gentle curves. 

Yes. Sun and shadows and the earth’s curves. Enough to make an honestly happy woman of me. 

But stay tuned. Pretty soon I come to an area where they are cutting down trees. At first I’m not thinking about why are they cutting down all these beautiful trees. No, I get distracted from that by a sign. 

Not that I have had a life long ambition to climb on timber piles but there is something about being told what not to do that makes it seem very attractive. As I passed the next pile of timber I was just itching to clamber up the logs to the top. 

Doesn’t it look inviting? Do you want to come? Shall we just jump up there together and be bad? (I’ve never forgotten the course I took once in the literature of romantic love. The key element in the literary tradition it turned out was for the love to be in some way forbidden. We humans find such desire elicited by the very fact that a thing isn’t allowed. )

This went on and on. More warning signs. More piles of timber. I wasn’t even thinking “dead cut down trees” I was just thinking I want to do what isn’t allowed!

Now surely I could climb up these without having them start to roll and dash me to pieces. 

Then came this sign:

And pretty soon I was having an argument in my head with the sign. What do you mean people just like me? If there were other people just like me in the world I wouldn’t be struggling with all these feelings of being an outsider and an outcast. I’d belong. 

I thought it was pretty impressive that I could get into an argument all by myself while walking alone on a beautiful trail. (I thought that it would be fun to write about it in my blog. And it is. )

I did pass one pile of timber that I really could imagine starting to roll and collapse while I tried to clamber up it. I really could picture all those logs starting to roll and falling from the cliff above the loch. 

It looks a wee bit precarious even to me. So I will not invite you to climb this one with me. (But wouldn’t it be fun?)

Meanwhile I start to look beyond the piles of timber to the clearcut stretches of hills behind them. The land looks wounded. I’m wondering now about trees. Why did they cut them down? To prevent spread of a tree disease? To replace non-native trees with native varieties that would help rebuild a healthy forest ecosystem? I don’t know but I know I have a wrenching emotional response to seeing the denuded land. 

Actually I was doing a very fine job getting myself to feel depressed. Who cares if the sun is shining? Who cares about beautiful shapes of clouds reflected in water? The trees are being cut down. Which ones will be next?

I’m actually cheating. The photo above of clouds reflected in water was from the earlier part of the walk when the trail was right beside the water, before we were diverted uphill to where all the trees were being cut down.

Even when I got back into walking through an area with trees, all I could think of was “Will these be next?”

However, to do me justice i did see some things other than timber piles and lost trees. Take for example this male frog riding piggy back on this female frog so he will be able to fertilize her eggs as she lays them. I’d never seen frogs riding piggy back before and had to Google it to learn what it was about. 

And I noticed, and was moved by, the deep grooves in the hills across Lochy Loch from me. 

But I got into a whole new rant when I looked across and noticed geometrically shaped patches of trees - as if they had been planned and planted in ways that totally disallowed the beauty that occurs maturely when nature operates free from human plan and domination. Is this part of managing Scotland’s forests? Of bringing back native trees and replanting them, of “rewilding” Scotland, in submission to human science and plan? You can pretty much imagine my rant. I felt like humans are really gifted to be able to plant trees on a hill and make them look ugly. Now that takes talent. 
Somehow this photo doesn’t convey how ugly it was, how lacking in the grace that trees have when they grow freely. 

I don’t suppose this one will do any better. 

It’s Wierd. In the photos all those patches of trees look kind of cute. When I was walking they looked really ugly. Do you think it’s my sugar high and that great ginger cake? It’s certainly a possibility. Like whisky, sugar has the power to abolish cares and brighten joys. 

 It’s been fun walking with you and I am very grateful you came along. (I’m sorry I didn’t take a photo of the ginger cake and pouring cream for you. Probably I couldn’t bear to share it!)

 I do hope you will join me tomorrow when we walk to Fort Augustus. And thank you. I have so much fun writing these blogs and it’s all because you are there - with the strength and courage and caring to walk through all these words, and come along with me. 🙏