River in Scotland

Continued from  Speyside Way - Day 6 of 6 - complete! - Part 2 I found Buckie an interesting and attractive town, lots of old stone buildings. I walked right by my hotel because it didn’t occur to me that I would get to stay in such a dignified building with such gravitas. The inside is full of antiques - clocks, teddy bears, old paintings.  And here is the view of the sea at sunset from my window.  I watched it change colors for quite awhile and noticed that birds seemed to be watching it too, sometimes flying from place to place (like those high chimneys) as if to get a better vantage point. I thought how much they seemed to enjoy flying and watching he sunset. Surely the miracle this world’s joy and beauty is enough that I can accept the whole of it as a gift - even the horror and suffering? Tomorrow I make my way to Glasgow to be a guest of our new young friends Kate and Natalie and see Glasgow and Edinburgh. I’m sure city crowding and pace and stimulation will be a s...

Continued from  Speyside Way - Day 6 of 6 - complete! - Part 1 I was surprised as I approached the mouth of the river to see a swan. Then I noticed another too far away to get them in the same photo. Almost immediately as I thought that the swan started moving quite rapidly toward its mate (leaving a noticeable wake). Do you think it was the boys in the pub again? I don’t exactly believe in this stuff - I tend to dismiss it as woo woo, but it did seem as if that swan overheard my thoughts and simply wanted to make me happy. Sorry the pictures are fuzzy. I wasn’t very close to the swans.  At one point I was walking by a field of sheep and most of them were lying down, heavy and motionless on the earth like big white stones. As I walked by I found their stillness deeply calming and it occurred to me that counting sheep might work to put me to sleep if I counted sheep not running and jumping over a fence but lying on the ground so still that it looks as if they have always been t...

April 26 - Wednesday. AND Happy Birthday to Judy and Scott Malcolm! I walked from Fochabers to Buckie, official estimate 10 miles, my iPhone says 12.4. I have completed a total of 254 miles (by official estimates) in the last three weeks. My iPhone says 309 miles (that includes walking I did on rest days, extra walks to restaurants, getting lost or losing mittens and backtracking - you get the picture. ) Today started out sunny and stayed that way. I guess our whisky-drinking pranksters got the idea that they would have to do something different to surprise us. No back and forth today just sunny (a few brief interludes of going behind clouds) and blue sky. I loved the parts of the walk where I could see the river. The river seemed to be flowing fast and enthusiastically and I imagined asking her if she wasn’t a little bit scared about flowing into the ocean. The question didn’t even make sense to her. It was just where she happened to be flowing. But for me it was a metaphor for death ...

Continued from Speyside Way -Day 5 of 6 - part 2 Another theme of today’s walk was related to feeling uncomfortable about the B&B I stayed it. My room was very cold and I had a hard time getting in chilled (I believe I wrote about that - hike it wasn’t in the deleted part). In addition, the young woman who owns it seemed cold and unwelcoming to me. I kept mulling it over in my mind. Had I done something to put her off? She seemed warmer toward two men guests at breakfast. I began to wonder what it was like for her as a young mother and herself having been raised by parents who ran a B&B. I wonder about the fundamental insight of Freud’s Oedipal complex - for Freud it is very essential that it is about the son’s envy of the father and urge to destroy him in order to become the sole or at least the most beloved of the mother. I’ve spoken how the same dynamic can play out between siblings. But why not guests too? Suppose your parents are in the hospitality industry and they have t...

Continued from Speyside Way - Day 5 of 6 - part 1 One of the recurrent thoughts today as I walked was what a privilege it is to walk outside and see the whole panorama of the sky and watch it change. I have to say I am not accustomed to the kind of rapid change those Scottish weather design jokers and whisky lovers create in the weather here. By the way, the wordle today (spoiler alert STOP NOW and go play Wordle if you haven’t done so today and you want to) was a word I have been thinking so often these last few days and yet somehow I managed not to guess it! I even list my winning streak and can you believe it the word was JOKER. Those same pranksters in the pub get to choose the wordle words. This is definite evidence of a conspiracy.  But being able to see the sky - how radically different it is in different directions and from moment to moment. Look at these two photos of the same picnic table at the same moment (well, a very close by moment) just looking in different dir...

April 25, Tuesday. Craigellachie to Fochabers. Official estimate 12 miles. iPhone estimates 13.1 to 14.75 miles.  Hello Friends. Thank you so much for taking the time and energy in your precious life to share this walk with me. Writing these blogs - made possible by your caring and supportive presence and your fun and encouraging responses - is as important as the walk itself is to me. Had a bit of a rough night last night. I just couldn’t get my B&B room warm enough. I found windows slightly open and fixed that. I turned the radiator up as high as I could. I was a bit chilled from the walk - just toward the end it had snowed for long enough to get me cold and a little wet. I didn’t realize my under layers were damp and kept wearing them, which contributed to the chill. I’m sure part of why I lived the fire in the bar last night was that I finally got warm and all those clenched shivery muscles began to let go and relax. Or did I unconsciously know I was being allowed to warm ...

Continued from Speyside Way - Day 4 of 6 - part 1 Okay. You are not going to believe this. I’m sitting here eating my dinner in this pub and a man walks in and orders a dram of whisky and mentions that it is his birthday. And I notice a swirl of sexual energy when he is in the room. Which is odd for me to notice, because I am not very attuned (actually I am very un-attuned) to sexual energy in this particular stage if my life). But after he has left and returned a few times I figure what are pubs for, pubs are for stories, so I ask about his birthday and what leads him to be celebrating it in this particular place. It turns out he is on a special tour his younger brother created for the two of them and two other close friends to celebrate the younger brother’s “big” 70th birthday. And the younger brother has planned especially that they would be staying at the lodge of which this pub is a part on the older brother’s birthday because this lodge is their former home. This is the hous...