Knoydart, part 3/3
As is often the case in the darkest moments of a good story, when the heroes can see no way forward through the gloom, something suddenly, even subtly, presents itself—a small ray of hope, a slight turn of events—which ultimately unfolds into the happy ending. For us, on the exposed, blustery, drenching Scottish mountainside, when the summit of Ladhar Bhenn seemed impossibly far away through the unrelenting weather, it was whiskey. When we three had half a mind each (or more) to give up and pick our way back down to the glen far below, suddenly the Irishman remembered he’d packed a flask of whiskey. At first, it was just a small pleasure—the thought of it—bringing a little gleam of much-needed delight to each of our eyes. But it was small; in fact, the Finn and I had become accustomed to packing a flask of Scottish whisky on our previous Caledonian adventures, and the appearance of Irish whiskey (even spelled differently) did not have the same effect as a local spirit may have had. Yet the soon-to-be-married Irishman did not let us down, in the least; he’d brought a high-quality malt from a fine distillery of his homeland. As we swilled and passed and the warmth suffused our souls, slowly and steadily the little gleam in our eyes grew to a flame which then was fanned into a fire, and we began to look at one another not with mutual despair but with renewed, triumphant hope.
Presently, we mustered our strength, rose to our feet, and plunged headlong into the near-horizontal rain and wind, upwards toward the peak. It was slow going, indeed, and often terrifying; at times, it felt the wind would sweep us right over the edge of the precipice to our left. But we held our footing and trudged onward, up the rugged, steep side of the Munro. At such a barren, remote height, signs of life seemed sparse—the scrub grass and heather whipped fiercely about in the wind, and lichens clung to the rocky terrain for all they were worth. Looking ahead, though, through a break in the fog and spray, suddenly I spied a sheep. He munched contentedly on grass, peering out over the landscape as if it were a tranquil pasture. Sheep, I suppose, are even more ubiquitous in Scotland than Land Rovers; they can, and do, go everywhere. Upon spying me, however, the sheep darted off—to who knows where—disappearing into the turbulent mist.
Heads down and fists clenched, we slogged on, leaning into the mountain and laughing together senselessly in our misery. False summit after false summit threatened to defeat our intrepid spirits, and we hardly spoke a word as we ascended—not that we could have heard each other over the roar of the wind. Once, we ducked in behind a particularly massive boulder, the silence suddenly hemming us in as if we’d stepped into another realm; we caught our breaths for a moment in the calm, then we threw ourselves back out into the unyielding weather. Up and up we went, one painstaking step at a time, until, at long last, the summit came into view. We rushed forward together, covering the final rugged stretch as quickly as we could manage, and the cairn (a pile of rocks atop every Scottish peak) lay within reach. We decided to let the groom (“stag” in Scottish) claim the summit, and we soon gathered round him at the cairn, honorably renaming the peak after the Irishman, who grinned in the raging gale. Our brief celebration concluded, we leapt beneath the nearby precipice, taking shelter on a small ledge below the wind. We looked at one another, shaking our heads in laughter, and we broke out the whiskey once more. “This is the last time you’ll ever climb a Munro with us as a single man,” we toasted the Irishman. Listening to the fierce wind whipping just above our heads, I added, “Hopefully this is the last time you’ll ever climb a Munro with us, period.”
Our journey back consisted of a dangerously rapid descent down a steeper, more direct route (following the course of the glenside rivulets), many attempts at making ourselves into human kites, and, after a revisit of the hospitable bog at the bottom, a trek much longer than any of us had remembered back down the winding forest roads to wee Inverie, at last. That night in the Old Forge was one of the best, most well-earned meals of my life; the ale tasted richer, the stew heartier, and the whisky warmer than I may ever have had. Though our legs ached terribly, we slowly dried out, and we ate and drank our fill late into the night. As we recounted our gallant ascent of Knoydart’s Munro, the Finn, the Irishman, and I soaked in the old wood and resonant laughter of Britain’s remotest pub, the spitting rain pelted on the windowpanes at our backs, and we quaffed deeply of camaraderie and of Scotland and of our next, foolhardy adventure.