The last short ride, and meandering reflections

Our last ride was, in some ways, the hardest. Eleanor had slept fitfully on the train from Glasgow and was shivering when I woke her just after Stonehaven. It is only 3 miles from Aberdeen railway station to Yeti Nivas, our home in Donmouth. At 12:30 AM, though, Aberdeen’s a nasty place. We turned out of the station onto Guild Street and then up the hill towards Union Street. Around us drunks wandered across the streets, shouting abuse at each other. Bottles crashed somewhere nearby. We turned onto Union Street; it was quieter than usual, but Eleanor asked to ride next to me as we pedalled through the midnight chaos. She’s never had to see what Aberdeen becomes late at night.

We made it to the end of Union Street with no unwanted attention, and headed off up King Street towards home. The work of riding was easy, but riding along an urban street with antagonistic drivers passing close by made it clear we were no longer in a cycle-friendly space. Aberdeen is easily the most hostile city I have ever cycled in—–the drivers honk, shout and nudge, and even the driving instructors and busses push into the forward bicycle zone at traffic lights. The addiction to oil and its hatreds runs deep here. It is a relatively flat city with two beautiful rivers and a number of fine parks that could be a real haven for cyclists, but I do not see any hope for that under the present city council or, indeed, under the oil oligarchs that really run the city.

Enough complaint, though! We did make it home. Bhāvanā was waiting for us anxiously and we were so grateful to be welcomed into the house and packed off to a much needed bed.

Reflections on politics, ecology and religion

I had hoped on this ride to consider how the Great Glen, an ancient artery and now a thriving tourist route, might teach us something about Scotland on the brink of independence. That’s not a polemical claim. It may be two years or twenty, and I would not put it past the shrill preacher’s daughter May to start a war just like her idol did! But the Unionist parties’ bad faith at the referendum has been shown up starkly through Brexit. That betrayal has set in motion a series of changes that can’t be stopped now and I am sure Scotland will be its own country and part of the European Union again.

Perhaps the most obvious point is that both of the families with whom we stayed had settled in Scotland from England and were not convinced of the arguments for independence. To us, who are connected through the universities and through our families to Europe, Asia and North America as well as England, there is no good reason to allow a Westminster government in thrall to English nationalism to destroy Scotland’s global future (let alone its great universities). For those two families, Scotland was an adventure and a risk, the loss of Britain was threatening, and the Scottish government could be a comfortably annoying hook on which to hang blame. However we build a consensus leading to independence, it is vital to find a narrative in which these settlers (and in Alasdair Gray’s terms, they are definitely settlers and not colonists!) feel they have a stake and a purpose in building a better nation——-that that comfortably annoying government is their government.

Our meeting with the teacher from Mt. Pleasant, Michigan, carries another lesson. The Great Glen is an important destination for international travellers, whether it’s the Nessie-philes, family heritage tourists, or folks coming to see one of the great sublime landscapes. Scotland matters hugely in the world to other people. Our struggle to be a better nation matters. For Americans humiliated by the election of a leaky inflatable clown to the presidency, it matters a lot: Scotland is a site of hope, a proof that political idealism isn’t dead. The move towards independence in Scotland is a move towards small-state, ecologically responsible politics. In a world dominated by greedy corporatist governments, it’s a moral process.

That poses a significant problem for the SNP. Inasmuch as they are both the party in power and want to be the party that stands for a new nation, they have a dilemma. As a wise friend said the other day, ‘I wish we could debate independence without the SNP trying to own the debate.’ During the last referendum there was a wonderful sense of an alliance for independence among the Greens, the SNP, those elements of the Labour party that are actually Scottish, and a few others. That sense of alliance was lost right after the referendum, though. I admire the Scottish Greens enormously for the way they conduct themselves at Holyrood, given how ungrateful the SNP can sometimes be. (I would say the same thing to my SNP friends at Westminster: they conduct themselves with far more integrity than anyone else.) While I cannot see it happening under the present SNP, it would be truly wonderful if there were an announcement to the effect that ‘We acknowledge that the project at hand is independence and we cannot do this alone: there must be a coalition of hope. Moreover, we recognise that the moment we have together won independence, we must implement a new constitution. In order to achieve that constitution in the best possible way we will resign and seek re-election in a vibrant democracy filled with other political parties.’ No political party in the world has yet found the courage to recognise its own death and rebirth, but then again, Scottish politics are sometimes nearly miraculous.

The landscape through which we rode was filled with friendliness. So many folks, who saw nothing more than a wee girl in a blue jacket on a purple bike and a man in a yellow jacket on a green bike with big bags, took the time to wave, smile, say hallo. The minimalist dour affirmations I’m used to from Aberdeen (there’s a real art to the tiny head-jerk and ‘ngh!’) were replaced with positively effusive hand gestures. Drivers slowed down around us on the road, and offered a kindly flick of the lights after they had passed. There were bothies and bungalows and huts and boats, solar panels and windmills and recycling bins. This very long cycle path had been negotiated across several estates, Forestry Commission land, the Caledonian Canal itself, and even through Inverness and Fort William: that itself was impressive.

I think if we were to go that way again I would want to take more time for side trips to ecosystems, Munros and sacred sites. It would take years to see all the wildlife. One of the Kilted Walkers said they’d seen an osprey on Loch Lochy that same morning, for which I traded my sighting of the kingfisher. There are pine martens and otters there, certainly, and the dolphins in the Moray firth, and the salmon along the Lochy. Given the tremendous variety of soils, elevations, and exposures along the Glen there is surely a substantial handbook to the plants of the region as well. There must be clootie wells; and there’s the Buddhist retreat near Drumnadrochit, that lonesome Catholic church in Stratherrick, the tiny chapel we passed. How many layers of sacred landscape are there by that glen? Paying attention to my PhD student Stephanie Garrison’s work: Culloden, General Wade’s road… The chatter everywhere we paused was about ‘the season’ that was due to start this next week and very soon that glen will be filled with folk who have carefully researched the maps, the histories, the drawings, the stories and are longing to see a thousand particular places, as well as folk who are just drifting by with a camera and a week to spare.

And then there’s religion. Cycling along Loch Ness it was hard not to remember the Naga shrine at Samye Ling, the new retreat near Drumnadrochit and that odd interview for the Scotsman a few years back. Of course Nessie’s a nāga, and it’s not too hard to visualise the whole of the Great Glen as a maṇḍala. What would the priest at that lonely church in Stratherrick think? Gossip at the next table in the cafe Fort William included a long discussion of the Kirk and what the minister would or wouldn’t allow. Why, in the face of this wonderful diversity, does Scotland take such a weak line on secularism? Bulmer’s article seems to me the worst kind of vampire conservatism, and the Kirk (at its best) is such a militant institution that it could not honestly wish to be covertly privileged in a new Scottish nation. What a slap to the Scottish Enlightenment that would be! Strong separation between any religion and our state is the only choice for a credibly modern nation if we want to bring as many people as possible along with us. I do wonder what will happen to the rest of us after independence if there is no guarantee of strong constitutional separation.

Reflections on reflections

We tried to capture the astonishing play of light and mass and water along the length of the lochs but an iPhone just can’t do it. Maybe a medium format camera with black-and-white film? I did bring my sketchbook and watercolours with me, but if there was free time it was spent talking with Eleanor. I proved to my own satisfaction that it was possible to keep a blog, sort of, with an iPhone and a lightweight bluetooth keyboard but reading back through what I’ve written the prose is repetitive and there are many typos. When we do undertake a longer expedition, an iPad would be much better for the sheer legibility. My eyes change focus less and less easily as the years wind by and it is hard work writing onto a small screen.

Eleanor for her part wrote a paper journal for exactly one night and brought Gulliver’s Travels. She bravely failed to pierce its rather convolute dialect again—so I read it to her as a bedtime story. I’d brought Roy Wagner’s Invention of Culture but if she had read that to me I would have fallen asleep instantly. After the exhilarating first chapters I found myself staring, grumpily, at yet another manifestation of the linguistic turn in chapter 3. I’ve critiqued the linguistic turn sharply in a talk I gave at Cambridge two years ago; like human exceptionalism, it’s a spectacular example of the failure to practice cultural relativism just when it matters most. That paper will be written up as a chapter in the Buddhist critique of the Protestant bases of anthropology when I finally get all the bits done right. So no reading and no painting for me, just a rare bit of writing.

Mapping

One lack, I think, was a really rich and generative map. We had the Sustrans NCN78 map, which was good enough though it lacked detail. In hindsight I would have taken the Ordnance Survey maps as well. Battery life on the iPhone 6plus is so poor (especially if the GPS is running) that it was impossible to use the iPhone as a mapping device (either for locating ourselves or creating maps) without some kind of power supply. Yet there was so much that we didn’t see, or didn’t know to look for. Where were the stations on the old branch line to Fort Augustus? Are there any remnant patches of the Caledonian Forest around? Where were the ancient monasteries and abbeys along the way? Is there a map of every clootie well? Where are the otters, the ospreys, the orchids? The OpenStreetMap initiative is a wonderful project but I can well imagine a participatory mapping journey in which every pause along the way to ask for directions or a refill of water also included some collaborative mapping. Where are your favourite trees near here? Where is the oldest house in town? Are there any really ugly new developments that you wish weren’t happening? Where do you go to pick berries (that you’re willing to share with us!)? If it were shared (in some sort of offline-usable, open source and community-led way) then our journeys would be informed by, and inform, the journeys of others. Add a time dimension (who was here on this day last year? what have people recorded at the full moons? How does the pulsing tourist season intersect the salmon pilgrimage?) and you’d have a cracking collaborative memory/imagination for all those braided routes. I bet there’s a tool for that!

Thanks

Finally a few thanks are in order, and no, there was no sponsorship for any of this. The folks at the Aberdeen branch of the Edinburgh Bicycle Co-op have been endlessly patient and helpful in getting us ready. Foyers Bay House (no website) and the Forest Lodge Guest House both provided cycle-friendly accommodation, good chat, and huge lunches. Scotrail got us there and back, and our special thanks have to go to the staff at the Fort William and Crianlarich stations who were amazingly helfpul and very friendly.