By early ought-four, Amy was married to a gentleman from the prospering field of high technology. Her new husband was transferred to his employer’s London office, and the couple established residence in Windsor, a half hour train ride east. Near that time, our youngest, Christopher, and his girlfriend, Erica, went to live in Edinburgh, Scotland. A graduate of culinary school, Chris had acquired a youth work permit for the United Kingdom and had been working at an Italian restaurant in the city for a several months. Encouraged by our children to visit them, Kathleen and I found someone to care for our pets, packed our bags, and headed for the UK for a two week vacation.
In Edinburgh one morning we rented a car. With Chris and Erica, the four of us crowded into a new compact Ford. It was late in the kid’s stay in Scotland. They had endured a rough winter. Rougher, they said, than any they had experienced in the Pacific Northwest. Now in the first twinkling of Spring, they were eager to move on. They were free to explore the countryside.
The Ford had a manual stick-shift using the familiar sequence. But with the steering wheel on the right side of the car, the shifting had to be done with the left hand. More awkward than that; we needed to drive on the left side of the road. Chris and Erica, yet minors, were prohibited by the rental agreement to get behind the wheel. So the driving was up to Kathleen and me. A straw was drawn, and it was me to start us out. Out of the city, along a bit of freeway before pulling off to a secondary highway and handing it over to her. I feared that I had already had enough.
Soon we were rolling along an asphalt ribbon, up through hills geometrically coated in tree farms. A river would sparkle on one side of the road awhile, then the other. One issue we had, aggravating both Kathleen and myself; the line of cars pressing into the rear view mirror. Here we were, rushing along the little highway, seemingly no larger than your or my driveway, with wild abandon, and everyone back there was able to keep up with us, and, not only that, they were implying that we should go faster.
It was afternoon when we began entering the Highlands. The scenery became more awesome. The road became more ours. I was at the wheel again, driving in wide open country, along a road ever more empty of traffic. Heavy, granite blue clouds scraped over jagged black peaks just out our windows. They dropped sheets of rain onto snow fields one could measure by the square mile. In the distance one could see it would be more of the same to the horizon; the immense, presumably silent, space above the still, massively rumpled land, an unmade bed part of Earth. It got me somewhere in my heart. There were turnouts, often at the end of a slow, steady climb, and I was compelled to pull us aside for another look, another inhale of that air, and while my companions stretched their legs, I ran about with my arms flung wide open to embrace another enormous scene, declaring my allegiance to this place with ever increasing drama.
The evening sort of sneaked up on us. We suddenly felt ourselves in a tiny ship on a vast, less-than-friendly ocean. The light purpled and blued. At the final viewpoint I got out alone, took a big look at the lengthening shadows, got back into our Ford and quickly shut the door. It was getting cold. Then I noticed that Kathleen had gone into emotional neutral, while in back they appeared to be fuming.
Okay, we haven’t the slightest idea where we will be spending the night. But what really is the problem?
Chris spoke for the back seat. All day he and Erica had felt trapped in the back of the car. They had watched the mad swirl out the windshield, not sure what we’d do first; drive into a cold river or dash head-on into oncoming traffic. No, it didn’t help, either, to come to the end of the day out in the middle of nowhere. He and Erica had decided the other plan would have been better. That would have had us taking the train for the West Coast, then ferrying on out to the islands.
It was Kathleen who insisted on us getting the car. She repeated her case; that we’d enjoy the comfort and convenience, and have the freedom to go anywhere we want. Maybe it was a mistake to have come North, though, if that’s the way everybody felt.
I turned in my seat as well as I could in order to face the children. Chris is six three and Erica is fair sized. They were jammed together at their hips and shoulders, were partially unfolded out into the available space left by the softer of our luggage, that which overflowed from the trunk.
I stated what I thought had been apparent earlier; that there were always cars on our butt. There was usually no place to pull over. Those people behind us wanted us to go faster and faster. And my other point: If Mom hadn’t rented us the car, and we hadn’t come North, then I – for one – would not have gotten to see this place. I summed up by saying, yes, I was having fun. Then I asked if anyone thought it counted when I was having fun.
That part of the conversation ended here. To wit, we urgently needed to proceed to the first warm meal and shelter we could find, especially while there was daylight. We rode West, then North into the violet air. We descended, while the mountains began to ridge and the great sweeps of land between them deepened into steep walled valleys. The grand patches of snow disappeared and the valleys filled with water. We drove along the shore of a lake. There was no longer anyone on the road but us. We still had the light. In March, perhaps, the twilight lingers reliably, enough for the dalliers to find home.
Soon, we spotted a house. It was slate roofed, two stories of white-washed stone, set in the embrace of several large, leafless trees. Lamplight warmed the downstairs. A sign at the road read that it was an inn. Up the creaky wooden stairs inside, to the second floor, there were five vacant bedrooms, of which we were cheerfully rented two. Downstairs and in the back was the dining room. There, two men and a young woman played pool. They lived nearby, and spoke barely understandable English. The four of us sat with our meals, our dark brews, finally content. Out our window, notably, daylight remained. In view, beyond some fields, between us and the failing mauve face of a rugged mountain, was the formidable liquid body of the Loch Ness, the lair of the monster.
