The Only Way This Would Be Better Is If Howard Shore Was Scoring It.

So, I went to Braemar with the Hillwalkers last week, and I've been too busy to write about it until now. I had to wake up at 7 to get to the Union for the drive, and then fired up my ipod for two hours on a winding road into the hinterlands of Aberdeenshire on a charter bus. I caught my first glimspe of a Highland Coo, and I'm pretty sure I saw some pheasants. The only things I'd heard about Braemar is that it was where Victoria had an estate or something and that it was in Aberdeen, which is like the New Zealand of the UK in terms of its ratio of sheep-people relationships to people-people relationships; so I went in expecting to take some crazy gorgeous pictures and little else.

As we gained altitude, it became sickeningly apparent that I was under prepared. I figured that there wouldn't be snow by this point in March, no reason to shell out the fourty quid to get my boots waterproofed, the weather's been warming, it's quite amiable in fact, so there's no point in packing thermals, and I don't really need to lug around an extra fleece, right? If April is the cruelest month, then March is the most deceptive - on account of this devious lunar cycle I made the assumption that I wouldn't need sunscreen, or sunglasses, or lip balm, or gloves, or a hat, or any other sartorial shields man has devised against the elements. I'd put on my cotton patagonia pants in morning, and thrown some sweatpants for the ride home into my completely unwaterproofed backpack.

Braemar, for the record, is in the middle of the Grampian Mountains. We passed multiple ski lifts that were crowded. In March.

The bus let us off, literally, on the side of the road next to a horse paddock. I didn't really know anyone else on the bus, except for Wesleyan!Marshall; but he chose to do the high-altitude hike, the one where you actually need a pick, and I was having none of that. Our group walked along the road until one of the leaders started to cut into a (snow-covered) field along a ravine, and the walk got very steep very quickly and didn't level off for a while. Soon I realized it was good to be in the middle of the group so that I could step where people in front had already made tracks. I fell in behind a friendly South African post-grad and Joe - one of the trip leaders from Luxembourg who would entertain those with flagging spirits by attempting to sled(ge) downhill on his bivy sack - and started to climb.

Let me try to relate the experience via metaphor: it was like using a stair master. It was like dunking your legs into a bucket of ice water before spending hours and hours on stair master that has been stripped of its handles, greased with oil, and stuck in a meat locker; and if you lose your balance, then you just might fall and die break something. I am here to relate that I was lured onto this particular walk by terms like "medium-low" and "river-walk" and "this is the one for the people who are still hung-over." These were lies. But they turned out to be good lies in the end, because the walk was just the right level of challenge for me - that butter zone between what you think you can do and what you're really capable of. I'm glad I did it and not the low-level, wander-around-the-woods-near-Braemar one. After the first initial steep section, the ground leveled off and we did indeed follow the river through completely unmarked, beautiful hills, meeting only a couple white rabbits gliding across the snow.

Part of me suspects the fun in this kind of outdoor activity has nothing to do with its level of pleasantness, that the exhilaration comes from the release of serotonin into the brain as one struggles to remain upright over long stretching of scrub and slush. But more of me thinks it comes from being immersed in a landscape like the Grampians, wherein one would expect to find a Beacon of Gondor or two. Even though my feet got so wet I began to hear the water sloshing inside my boots, it was well worth it to lie down for a "tea break" on the heather, watch the clouds and basically inhale a clementine, knowing I'd walked from one end of the map to the other. We did about fifteen kilometers (~10 miles) during the day, the last couple coming out of the mountains and passing into town through the Braemar golf course, which held an alarming number of ducks chilling on the side the road.

Braemar itself is a charming, one street-light town. There were forty kids on the outing altogether, maybe twenty were in the medium-low group, and most of us crashed at the bar of the Fife Arms hotel, an impressive stone building with a less impressive hunting lodge cliche interior. I, however, went on a quest for a pair of dry socks at 4:37 on a small-town Sunday afternoon. After a couple strikeouts, I found a Highland souvenir shop that had proper fine-wool dress socks to be worn with kilts, twenty pounds a pair. The shop lady was really sweet about it, however, and sold me a truly hideous, knee-high vermilion pair of clearance socks for a fiver. I crossed over a bridge back to the town square, changed into my dry things, and managed to nab some hot chocolate and shortbread from the Hotel coffee shop before they closed. I felt bad for the poor waitress. It was obvious she wanted to close up, but a group of maybe six nuns came in behind me, and you can't really say no to nuns, can you?


Behold.

At five the high altitude group came back and we all piled into the bus for the ride back to St. Andrews. I definitely want to go on another Hillwalking trip before the semester's over, if the experience will be half as awesome as this trip was. It took three days for the soreness in my legs to go away, but I got to go somewhere wondrous and see things I never would have seen otherwise; and that's what this whole abroad business is about.