For years, Edinburgh has been one of my favourite cities. Each time I come to the Scottish capital, it gets harder to leave. From its unique, tasteful architecture, to its prodigious castle, to its prolific summer theatre festival, the city has everything you need wrapped up in its tightly populated grey-yellow sandstone walls.
I arrived in Edinburgh late at night, hopping on the train after my 1 pm screenwriting course finished. Not much one can do while on a train, and I had six hours on my hands. So I popped a ridderall and wrote a blog.
I got into Edinburgh and met up with some of the lads for a curry at an Indian restaurant across the street from our hostel. As hungry as I was, the curry was disappointing. When ordering curry in England, a good rule of thumb is this: if the restaurant is a bit, shall we say, shitty, then keep the order simple. Tikka Masala or Madras. Don’t order anything special or out of the ordinary. Avoid Kormas or Malaya. With these complicated orders, the balance of spice to sweet, the mix of mango and coconut milk is a delicate task. If you're at a restaurant where, in addition to lamb Korma, they serve doner kebab, the most likely scenario is they botch it.
After the curry, I checked into the hostel and found it to be very nice accommodation. Four of us to a room with 2 clean bunk beds, our own shower, toilet and sink. With a hot breakfast in the morning and the presence of elevators and key cards (weird changes in form) the hostel was more like a hotel. I took a shower before going to bed, and for the first time in 64 hours, I got a decent night’s sleep. The next morning, after a full Scottish breakfast, I felt refreshed and revived, ready for my planned day of hiking Edinburgh’s crags.
A crag is a low-lying geological hill formation containing projecting outcrops of rocks or cliff faces. Luckily, Edinburgh had the Salisbury Crags, lying just minutes from the city centre. Looming picturesquely over the city, I had always admired Edinburgh's crags, but I never climbed them before. At about 10, I started climbing up the crags. I did not really know what to expect. I hoped that I would find that the trail leading to Arthur’s Seat (the highest point of the crags) would occupy at least two hours of my time, but I could not really be sure until I got up there.
The first stretch was steep uphill, following closely a cliff face on one side and a steep grassy bank on the other. I hugged the outer rim of the crag, circling it round its edge, until my trail lead me into a giant opening between several crags where my trail diverged into many. One lead back in the direction I came, but over the top of the outcropping of rock that I previously followed. Others went in all sorts of directions (you could probably follow any one of these trails to get to any given point in the city), but the trail I was most interested in was the one that went straight up, to Arthur’s Seat. I followed the path leading up to Arthur’s seat, which turned into quite a steep stretch, and reached the top where dozens of people sat and talked, looking out and taking in all that Edinburgh generously offered.
The crags proved to be a very enjoyable part of Edinburgh, and I was grateful to finally experience them. On the crags, there were families out for a hike, joggers out for a run, people walking their dogs, but the most intriguing part of the crags is that they are located just a five minute walk from the city. From Arthur’s seat, I could see the Castle and pin point the Royal Mile on one side of me, or turn around and look out over the bay on the other. Being surrounded on 4 sides by city life, it felt as though city of Edinburgh had its own public hiking-park.
After a fulfilling spell at the top of Arthur's Seat, I looked to shed the crowds in favour of a more reclusive trail. I hiked down a ways and turned in a new direction, where I found a very private trail. I followed this trail back up a bit until it ended by a large boulder jutting out of the side of the crag and there, perched on the boulder, overlooking the scores of people milling about below me and the city further down, I took out my journal and wrote an entry. I’m not sure exactly what I wrote, for I haven’t read it yet, but I remember thinking as I signed off that I dropped knowledge in some form or other.
As so the day went. With dozens of trails to hike (but no water, I always forget something when I travel ... think I touched on this in my journal), I had everything I needed to spend all day in the crags. I hiked Salisbury Crag and spent the day traversing and climbing these geological treasures so conveniently located in relation to the city. -- At the time, I was completely unaware, as by all probability I would be, that the events of the night to come would bring me back to these crags, 12 hours later.
***
The events of the night started after a shower, a shave and an inexpensive meal at a Mediterranean restaurant, (meaning, instead of ordering a doner kebab, I got a shwamera chicken kebab). Accompanied on a dudes’ night out by fellow program members, we wandered the streets of the Scottish capital, looking to get our hands on some fun. Our first stop on the night was Shisha, a restaurant and hookah lounge just off the Royal Mile, where we encountered some mixed news. The bad news, the lounge was full. The better news, but they could have a table ready for us in 15 minutes.
In Shisha, our group of dude’s gathered round a table, puffed some hookah, and set some ground rules for the night: no talking about girlfriends, but talking about girls was obviously acceptable. This was a dudes’ night. We weren’t talking about the semester-only students of the Dickinson program. This was a night for year-long Dickinson students only. Mikey wouldn’t talk about Lil’ Wayne (but saying ‘ya dig?’ occasionally was tolerable so long as it fit into conversation after someone said something cool) and in exchange I wouldn’t talk about Gulliver’s Travels or Mrs. Dalloway, (but the core themes of Swift’s scathing satire and Woolf’s bounding existentialism were permissable in the event that someone inadvisably brought them into play). And so the night slowly matured, scented in frothy strawberry, peach and vanilla smoke, complimented by intelligent conversation.
Staggering out of Shisha with a much lighter tesco bag and a pulsing hookah-high, we gazed out, mystified by the night, unaware that soon it would take on a sudden change in momentum. The streets appeared intricate and puzzling. The city seemed clouded and confusing. In the quest of searching for a bar, or a club, or some form or further intoxication, through a hazy run of bizarre events and a foggy series of uncontrolled impulses, in 30 minutes time, we found ourselves drifting south through town. Heedlessly, but with a concealed intent of reaching the crags.
***
The wind blowing fast off of the rocks finally knocks me back into recognition. I am racing frantically up the crags, desperate with each step to hit the black peak, churning harder and harder, careless of time as it transitions from the meaningless labels of ‘late’ to ‘early.’ My mind feels a lucid coherence that was not present when I walked out of the hookah lounge. My body finds stores of energy and persistence that should not be available after a full day of hiking, but more I push on, more I churn, more I give. Up and up, on and on. Then, I reach it. I stop. I breathe.
I fix my view out passed the blackness, to the twinkling city, feeling as I do so, that I am not just looking down on Edinburgh, but looking down upon Scotland, England, Wales and this strange yet magnificent island that I have called home for 3 of the 21 years of my life. As my eyes manage to see through the black, passed the city, to the bay, it appears that I am looking at Cornwall, at the Southern coast of England, that all of Great Britain has shrunk itself into my view.
After this reflecting moment, I finally become aware of my fatigue. I slump down onto the grass, close my eyes, and melt into the ground. As I breathe, the crag breathes with me. “Didn’t I write something about this in my journal earlier today? Nevermind.” I feel an inseverable tie to this island, to this city, to this crag, and most closely, to this very hike. As I lie back amorphously, gazing up at the stars, I think about a concept I wrote about earlier in the day, just paces away from here, about hiking and nationality: ‘It’s not where your feet are from, but where they take you’ or some shit like that. But I think further. No, there's more. Feet are just the first level of a 2-part metaphor, that where they take you is irrelevant if your mind isn’t open to it. That to fully learn, or for that knowledge to really define you in a locational sense, you need the right mindset. But when you finally strike that balance, of location and mindset, something magical can happen; and, if it does, that’s really where you’re really from. That’s who you really are.
So where does this put my stupid quotation? ‘It’s not where your mind is from, but where your feet takes your mind, which then forges a strong connection to that place which will come to define you for years even though that place may or may not be where your feet are from.’ That doesn’t quite have the proper ring to it. Maybe I’ll just leave it as the first one, and take the mind-feet metaphor as a given. If I'm lucky I think I could get this quote on a poster in a high-school health classroom somewhere ... LW
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