Accepting uncertainty

The mass media rarely carry articles dealing with religion in a truly thoughtful manner. Insofar as they deal with religion at all, newspapers are more apt either to discuss sensational religious events ("Rapture didn't happen; we're all still here!), or to provide comfort to the religiously comfortable ("President lights up White House Christmas tree!").

Last week, however, USA Today ran an interesting feature article based on the thought of physicist and Anglican priest John Polkinghorne. Polkinghorne's work in the field of elementary particles led him to play a role in the discovery of quarks, and he has conducted advanced theoretical research in other areas.¹ Theoretical mathematicians and physicists typically do their most important work by the age of 30. When Polkinghorne felt his best work had been done, he began studies for ordination to the priesthood.

But the USA Today article focused less on his unusual combination of vocations, and more upon his thoughts concerning doubt and uncertainty. No one has ever seen a quark, the article noted. We "believe" in them because their supposed existence is necessary to make sense of the empirical data. The existence of quarks has not been "proved." In fact, no scientific theory is ever proved -- including evolution, as fundamentalists like to point out. If new data suggest a better theoretical model, scientists of course reconsider their "beliefs."

Similarly, Polkinghorne points out, we don't have empirical evidence of God's existence. The traditional "proofs" offered for the existence of God suggest reasons to believe, but do not constitute mathematical or logical proofs.

In other contexts, Polkinghorne has pointed to scientific or cosmological evidence that make belief in God reasonable, or even compelling, but the evidence does not logically demand belief in God's existence.

As we go through life, we are constantly forced to believe or not believe in logically possible conclusions based on our judgment of the conflicting strengths of the evidence and the repercussions resulting from making the wrong judgment. If we don't "believe" in global warming and so ignore it, for example, what are the consequences of being wrong?

Polkinghorne says that, as a thinking person, he naturally considers the possibility that God and Christianity could be human inventions with no basis in reality.

"It's [i.e., belief in God] a reasonable position, but not a knock-down argument," he said. "It's strong enough to bet my life on it. Just as Polanyi² bet his life on his belief, knowing that it might not be true, I give my life to it, but I'm not certain. Sometimes I'm wrong."

Quarks may be a fiction. Fossil evidence of dinosaurs may have been planted in the ground by a capricious God to lead prideful men to question Genesis. The universe, as I discussed in an earlier post, may have been a child's toy -- like a model train set -- cobbled together by a young super being, a toy that he left running after he went off to college. The world we observe by our senses may even be the dream of some Matrix-like pod people.

But based on the evidence known to him and on his life experiences, Polkinghorne has made a conscious decision to accept the existence of God and the message of Christianity, and to base his life on that decision. As Christian doctrine traditionally holds, belief in Christ would not be meritorious if it were forced on us by logic. Christian belief is not contrary to logic, but the merit adheres in our voluntary decision to assent to its message of love and to live our lives in accordance with that message.

Polkinghorne's own message goes beyond these age-old arguments between atheists and theists, however. If even devout Christians such as Polkinghorne are forced to admit the logical possibility of being wrong, how much more should those of us dealing with the more mundane, human questions of politics be willing to admit at all times that we know nothing with certainty, that our political and economic convictions are merely hopeful theories, and that we may well be thinking and acting in error.

Oliver Cromwell's exclamation to the Scottish church, "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken," applies to all facets of life. John Polkinghorne, Ph.D., professor of mathematical physics at Cambridge, President of Queen's College (Cambridge), and Canon Theologian of Liverpool Cathedral has issued our world a call for intellectual and emotional humility, a reminder that there is little if anything in our universe about which we can claim absolute certainty.

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¹He has "researched the analytic and high-energy properties of Feynman integrals and the foundations of S-Matrix theory," according to Wikipedia.

²"Michael Polanyi (March 11, 1891 – February 22, 1976) was a Hungarian–British polymath, who made important theoretical contributions to physical chemistry, economics, and the theory of knowledge. In his philosophical writings he argued that positivism not only gives a false account of the practice of science, it also, if taken seriously, undermines our highest achievements as human beings."
--Wikipedia

Camp Muir

If you're looking for a day hike that will give you some of the most incredible views available in the Pacific Northwest, as well as fully test your endurance, head for Camp Muir.

Camp Muir is the staging point for 90 percent of the summit climbs of Mt. Rainier, including those run by the Park's official guide service. After struggling from the roadhead at Paradise (5,400 ft.) up to Camp Muir (10,080 ft.), carrying 40 pound packs, you "enjoy" a few hours of sleep on wooden shelves inside a crowded, noisy shelter, built in 1921 and never redecorated, before being roused at about 11 p.m. to begin the climb to the summit (14,411 ft.)

But Camp Muir itself makes a nice day hike destination. I gave it a try yesterday, partly for the scenery, partly to help condition myself for my Nepal trek in October.

As those of us in the Northwest Corner are all too aware, we had a heavy snow pack this past year, and -- until the last two or three weeks -- an unusually cool summer. As a result, even the labyrinth of paths that the Park Service provides for car tourists -- paved in asphalt and designed to let families wander up above Paradise Lodge without too much effort, giving them an opportunity to view the wild flowers and wildlife -- remain covered by snow fields in many places. These paths are usually free of snow by mid-July. But the snow fields on these lower slopes aren't steep, and have foot paths etched into them, so the tourists were still out in force. A major attraction this year, one that I've never noticed before in this area, was a large number of large and unintimidated marmots, rolling and frolicking about beside the trail like a bunch of playful kittens.

The paths become more ambitious and dedicated to leading hikers to specific destinations once you reach a couple hundred vertical feet above the Lodge. The highest point reachable by trail is Pebble Creek, at 7,200 feet. Once past the creek, you find yourself on the Muir snowfield, a massive, undulating field of year-round snow that continues unrelentingly upward, all the way to the buildings at Camp Muir. While the trail to Pebble Creek is fun to walk for a number of reasons, the snowfield beyond is simply a long, exhausting slog. You do it because you have to, if you're a summit climber, or, for hikers, because you've told yourself that Camp Muir shall be the day's destination. The scenery becomes ever more spectacular, of course, as you climb higher -- but I suspect that scenery watching and photography become for most hikers mainly excuses to catch one's breath. That was certainly true for me, at least.

After you hang out for a while at the Camp, scoping out the views and perhaps feeling somewhat envious of those who are there for the summit climb, there remains the descent. I had departed from Paradise somewhat later in the day than I'd intended, and didn't start down until after 4 p.m. The snow was starting to ice in places, which made the descent less carefree -- and slower -- than I had hoped. (A number of falls, painful only to my dignity.) Also, I was wearing shorts, which made seat-of-the-pants glissades, a popular activity in the steep areas, not really feasible. I envied a large group of Indian or Indian-American tourists who had brought plastic garbage bags with them for use as sleds. They were descending more swiftly, and with a lot more noisy fun, than was I.

But the scenery was magnificent on a bright sunny day, and the temperature was moderate so that the hiking was comfortable. I took a bunch of great photos. And my muscles and cardiovascular system certainly got the workout I'd hoped for. Four hours up, and two and a half hours down. A highly satisfying day.

Rubus fruticosus

When I moved to my present house, the city block on which it's located was essentially one large plantation of blackberries. Each back yard was a space carved out of this plantation -- space stolen from the domain of the Mother Bramble, if you will. Where many city blocks might have an alley, we on 26th Avenue were separated from the houses behind us on 25th by a tangle of blackberry vines, growing on lots facing both streets, a tangle that towered above us. The Mother Bramble also shot out extensions, like pseudopods, between adjacent lots as well, so that my backyard was protected on three sides by walls of barbed vines.

Fences make good neighbors, but we had no need for wooden fences. We had our blackberries. And our "fences," unlike those built of sterile cedar planks, produced fruit. Quite tasty fruit, especially about this time of year.

But change came to the 'hood. More and more upward-aspirational techies and professionals moved in. The alluring photos in Sunset magazine didn't show back yards surrounded by blackberry vines, and Sunset magazine (or some more upscale version thereof) was the garden bible for the new immigrants.

I've always regretted the felling of the great American forest by the pioneers and those who came after. Something similar happened around these parts, as homeowner after homeowner cut his way deeper and deeper into the blackberry jungle. I'm not entirely immune from peer pressure, although more immune, perhaps, than my neighbors would prefer. I, too, eventually hired workers to root out my blackberries, to sanitize my backyard, to show myself as a civilized man in a civiized neighborhood.

The blackberries were gone, but, like Adam and Eve after the Fall, we now felt ourselves naked. The fellow next door quickly hid himself from his neighbors by building a fence around his yard to replace the blackberry barriers. I countered his starkly utilitarian fence, shielding it from my view, by planting a laurel hedge. My yard now appears reasonably tidied up. Just like everyone else's.

I have met the enemy, and he be me.

But there's a postscript. Blackberries don't surrender gracefully. They may concede the battle, but not the war. In corners of my yard, they spring back to life whenever my back is turned. Before I really notice, they begin reasserting themselves with renewed vigor, claiming territory as theirs by right. Just as the medieval church discovered, the battle against heresy is never won, because heresy always raises its ugly head when vigilance is relaxed.

And like a new convert to orthodoxy, my horror at each reappearance of blackberry vines exceeds the bounds of reason. I've been inspecting my backyard each morning with pruning shears in hand, ready to cut down each timid blackberry sprout as it emerges from the soil. My strategy is psychological -- the hope that I can convince the blackberries that resistance is futile, that they will be utterly destroyed the moment they appear above ground.

Punishment does not take place primarily and per se for the correction and good of the person punished, but for the public good in order that others may become terrified and weaned away from the evils they would commit

as the 1578 handbook of the Inquisition so adroitly phrased it.

Soon, I shall have extirpated the species entirely from my domain, and will live in a totally domesticated and controlled environment, with only those plants authorized by the editors of Sunset growing in my closely watched soil. I have conquered not only the wiles of Rubus fruticosus , but also my own earlier weakness and unhealthy tolerance of heterodoxy.

I think I'll celebrate by going to Safeway and buying a $4.99 carton of blackberries to heap on my mornng cereal.

Kidnapped

Some people, after returning from a first trip to Hawaii, can't resist reading James Michener's novel about the Islands. Or they visit Paris, and come home to read Hemingway's A Moveable Feast. Within a week of my return from Scotland, I found myself rummaging through my childhood books for my copy of Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped.

I read Kidnapped as a boy -- my folks had bought it for me along with Treasure Island as a matched set -- and, as I recall, it seemed kind of boring at the time. I read it several years ago as an adult, and found it more captivating. But after visiting Scotland -- having hiked in and about many of the same regions described in the book -- the novel is infinitely more interesting.

Kidnapped is a first-person tale narrated by a Scots teenager from a small town near Edinburgh. The plot is simple. In 1751, David Balfour, having lost both his parents, is cheated out of his inheritance by his uncle, who essentially sells him into slavery to work in the tobacco fields in the American colonies. He is shanghaied aboard a sailing ship, and the first half of the book describes life -- and David's horror and despair -- aboard ship. The ship is wrecked in the Hebrides, off the Isle of Mull. David survives and allies himself with a Highlander named Alan Breck Stewart, a real historical figure.

David and Alan are present when a Campbell clansman -- the Campbells being a clan that willingly acted as agents of the Crown in seizing the property of members of the dissident clans -- was shot and killed upon the highway. The so-called Appin Murder was a national sensation. Warrants were issued for the arrest of both David and his older companion on charges of murder and accessory to murder. The remainder of the story describes their grueling escape from the authorities by way of a circuitous path through the Highlands, back to Edinburgh. It ends with David's being restored to his inheritance.

After an awkward and halting farewell, David walks away into the glittering and busy streets of Edinburgh, well-dressed, with a prosperous life lying ahead. He leaves Alan in hiding, facing a dangerous sail for France, his sole hope for avoiding the noose. David is a well to do Lowlander; Alan, whose unwavering friendship kept David alive, is a dispossessed and despised Highlander.¹

I let the crowd carry me to and fro; and yet all the time what I was thinking of was Alan at Rest-and-be-Thankful; and all the time (although you would think I would not choose but be delighted with these braws and novelties)there was a cold gnawing in my inside like a remorse for something wrong.

The novel was serialized in a boys' magazine in 1886, but has always appealed to adults as well as kids. David, a reserved and conscientious "Whig" Lowlander, and Alan, a flamboyantly argumentative Jacobite Highlander, learn to appreciate each other's strengths and overlook each other's weaknesses. The story is satisfyingly biased in favor of the Highlander cause, and the book forces us, and ultimately even David, to root against the English authorities and the quisling Campbell clan.

What's fascinating to me -- aside from the vivid portrayal of one version of real historical events -- is the description of the same countryside that I visited some 260 years later, and of the lives and personalities of the people who inhabited it. Stevenson has his Highland characters speak in dialect when they're speaking English (or Scots, as the dialect is called), as opposed to Gaelic. The author said later that he had anglicized the Scots dialect somewhat to make it more readable, and my edition has a few footnotes defining unfamiliar terms; even so, I suspect that the language would pose a challenge to many kids reading it today.

In fact, the book is impressively sophisticated in language, description, motivation, and characterization, compared with much of what passes as Young Adult fiction -- e.g., vampire books -- today. The long days aboard ship, and the difficulties of hiking secretly through the bracken and heather of the wild Highlands rarely elicit sudden bursts of adrenaline,² as more modern readers may demand, but rather paint a picture, layer by layer, of the dangers and hardships of life and politics in 18th century Scotland, and the growth of a friendship between two protagonists from opposite backgrounds.

With that caveat, Kidnapped is worth reading for anyone, young or adult, who has an interest in history, and in the traditional life of the Scottish Highlands.

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¹Historically, Alan Breck Stewart was tried in absentia and sentenced to hang. He was never hanged, but no record exists as to his life after leaving Scotland. His father was tried in person as an accessory to the murder. Although no evidence was produced that the father intended the murder or had any part in it, he was convicted by a jury of Campbells and a Campbell judge, and was hanged. Recent historical studies have absolved both Alan and his father of any guilt in the killing. (David, of course, is a wholly fictional character.)

²Although the chapter in which David and Alan singlehandedly mutiny and seize control of the ship headed for the Colonies -- shortly before it runs onto a reef and is wrecked -- is exciting by anyone's standard.

Folksy writing

My blog's "mission statement" asserts my intent that it be "An exercise in careful writing, traditional grammar and tidy penmanship." And yet my posts are often replete with sentence fragments, slangy terms and unanswerable rhetorical questions.

So what's with that?

In an essay in today's New York Times Magazine, Maud Newton deplores the sloppy conventions, the "folksiness," of today's internet writing in general and of blog composition in particular. She spends much of her essay ascribing today's stylistic morass to the writings of David Foster Wallace, the author whose essay "Consider the Lobster" received extravagant worship from me in an earlier blog posting.

She dislikes Wallace's "second guessing" -- by which she means Wallace's frequent acknowledgement that his own point of view is not without weakness -- and his rapid alternation between formal speech and slacker slang. As example, she presents his felicitous phrase, "hard not to sort of almost actually like," which of course incorporates both "second-guessing" and slacker slang, along with a dollop of equally deplorable self-irony.

In fairness, Newton recognizes that Wallace had a brilliant mind and that his unfortunate style was part of his appeal. What she really hates is how his style has been adopted unreflectively by bloggers of lesser skills and intelligence.

Like me.

Like Newton, I've spent many years engaged in legal writing. And together with Newton, when I write professionally, I agree that the

idea is to provoke and persuade, not to soothe. And the best way to make an argument is to make it straightforwardly, honestly, passionately, without regard to whether people will like you afterward.

But when I do write a brief, my sole purpose is to persuade a judge that no reasonable person could disagree with my argument. I write only to persuade, not to entertain, and not to muse together with my reader on the complexities of life.

This blog is something of an escape from years of legal writing. I write partly to force myself to think clearly about issues I find interesting. I write partly to persuade, just as I do as a lawyer, but also partly to acknowledge that every point of view, including my own, has both merits and weaknesses, and to invite whomever stumbles upon my blog to think for himself.

And, sure -- I write to entertain. To entertain myself as I write -- an admitted self-indulgence -- and to entertain, or at least interest, my readers.

Newton's essay is interesting, and worth considering. There is, in fact, a tendency among modern writers to shun formality, and to write in the same casual manner as we speak. This tendency can be overdone, and the result can be not merely an informal style, but an irritating lack of clarity in expression.

But the writer needs to consider the purpose of his writing. If expressing an argument or fact with clarity is less important than conveying a mood or observing the humor in some quirk of life, the style of writing should -- or, at least, may -- reflect this purpose.

So yeah. What y'all think of that, huh?

Beyond barbarism

One way to identify a primitive society is by its tendency to judge all issues -- political and ethical -- in terms of black and white. Hence, the concept of "taboo" or "kapu," a Polynesian word that also applies to the codes of most early societies. Think, for example, of the lengthy list of absolute prohibitions set forth in the Book of Leviticus.

But religious taboos are merely one aspect -- and not that important an aspect -- of what we might call Manichean thought processes. In 18th century England, theft of a shilling or more was a felony, and whether the judge liked it or not, there was only one penalty for felonies -- hanging. Many a ten-year-old pickpocket found himself strangling at the end of a rope. For whatever cultural or psychological reasons, Republicans even today seem to have a similar -- if less gruesome -- mindset, and a strong aversion to viewing political issues as presenting varying shades of gray. ("No new taxes, whatever the consequences," for example.)

President Obama announced today that he is directing Homeland Security to focus its attention on deporting those illegal immigrants with criminal records who pose a danger to national security or public safety, and to ease up on others -- students and college graduates, especially, who were brought illegally as children to this country. Fox News headlined the President's announcement: "GOP: Obama Giving Free Pass to Illegal Immigrants." Republicans denounced the action as "backdoor amnesty"; the Republican governor of Arizona said Obama was enacting the so-called Dream Act "by executive fiat."¹

I still remember the case of Rigoberto Padilla. Padilla was brought here illegally from Mexico by his parents when he was six years old. He had lived in Illinois, never returning to Mexico even for a visit. He graduated from high school with a 3.5 GPA, and, while working full time, was a full time honors student at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he was also president of a Latino student organization. He planned to attend law school and become an attorney. He was stopped for a minor traffic offense, his immigration status was discovered, and he was given four months to return voluntarily to Mexico -- a country he knew nothing about -- or be deported.²

"He is now going to pay for the sins of his parents, really, and we cannot be making special exceptions for him," said a right-wing activist opposing illegal immigration.

Simple question of black or white.

"No Amnesty" has been the mantra of right-wing opponents to any easing of the immigration laws. Deport them all, they demand, every one of the millions of undocumented immigrants, no matter how long they have been here, no matter how valuable their lives have been to their communities. Their presence somehow is an affront to those of us who, despite having spent our lives sitting slack-jawed before our TV sets, are nevertheless more deserving of this country's amenities, because we happen to have been born here.

Fortunately, the legal system recognizes the concept of  "prosecutorial discretion" -- a concept that reflects the realization that we will never have enough prosecutors or judges to charge and convict every offender against every law on the books. The concept also recognizes that not every technical statutory violation should be prosecuted, even if the resources to do so were available -- in too many cases, the damage to the offender would far outweigh any advantage to the community.

President Obama's guidelines to Homeland Security direct a sensible and compassionate exercise of such prosecutorial discretion.

The ability to weigh offenses on a case by case basis -- both by the prosecutor in deciding whether to charge the offense, and by the courts in determining the proper penalty upon conviction -- reflects our development from a rigid, primitive society to a humane and more reflective community. In other words, our progress beyond barbarism to a tenous status of civilization.

We don't automatically stone wizards, nowadays. (Lev. 20:27) We first ask for more details, and see if there aren't better ways to resolve the problem.

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Photo: Rigoberto Padilla at press conference

¹Interestingly enough, however, over 64 percent of Fox News readers (as of 8-19-11 at 11 a.m. PDT) voted approval for emphasizing deportation of criminals rather than of illegal immigrants in general.

As of 2:00 p.m., over 69 percent were favoring the President's position. And Fox had dropped the entire story out of headline treatment.

²At the last minute, after a public outcry, his deportation was deferred for at least one year.

Land of dreams

Over the past two weeks, while the American economy was falling prey to the dysfunctional American political system, and while the cities of Britain were being burned by hopeless youths, I was hiking obliviously and happily through the Highlands of Scotland.

I've described my anticipated route in past blog postings. The scenery along the trail was beautiful every step of the way, from the pastoral suburbs of Glasgow, past the calm, fjord-like waters of Loch Lomond, into the Highlands, weaving through the crags and bogs of Rannoch Moor, down into the valley of Glen Coe, and back up over a final lobe of Rannoch Moor and down into Fort William.

The predicted rain fell, although not day by day, hour by hour. I had three days during which fairly steady rain fell during at least part of the hiking day: Day 2 approaching Loch Lomond; Day 5 approaching Inveroran on the edge of Rannoch Moor; and the final day, climbing out of Kinlochlevan across moors and mountains to Fort William. It was on that final day that I confronted the steadiest rain, a rain that obscured what was billed as the most beautiful mountain scenery of the hike. I hiked for miles on gully-like trails that flowed with running water as though they were creek beds, being repeatedly forced to find a way across the "burns," or small streams, that flowed across the trail every few hundred feet or so. But then, I'm a Northwest Corner hiker -- not unaccustomed to moisture -- and was able to take that in stride. And I did have appropriate rain gear.

Each day's hike, although usually lengthy, was reasonably gentle, and the trail was extremely well maintained. For a significant portion of the hike, I was hiking on abandoned military roads from the 18th century, roads so well built that they remain in excellent condition and have required little maintenance. My longest day's hike was 18 miles on Day 2, three miles longer than advertised because of a wrong turn I took in extremely heavy rainfall. This misadventure, together with another mistake on Day 4 that led me to make an unnecessary steep climb into the hills, wasting 1½ hours, reflect little credit on the author's navigational skills. Further discussion on this topic, therefore, will not be tolerated.

Midges? A few bites the last three days of the hike, despite my purchase and use of Smidge^®, a Scottish concoction designed specifically to battle the midge threat, but the tiny bugs certainly didn't present a serious problem. I've had worse experiences with mosquitoes right here in the good old US of A.

Why hike in Scotland, when we have beautiful trails on which to hike here at home? I sensed that question in the minds of some of the Scots with whom I talked. And if you're looking just for pretty scenery and good trails, the question has a certain validity.

To me, however, there's the additional appeal of historical and literary allusions: Celtic myth, warring clans, Jacobite rebellions against the English, reivers and highwaymen, Rob Roy, Sir Walter Scott. I've also had a strong yearning, ever since childhood, to walk unknown paths shrouded in mists and myth -- that fairy world that makes up so much of Yeats's poetry, perhaps, or the mysterious empty lands of Tolkien's writings. The popularity of the LOTR books and movies surely indicates that I'm not alone in this yearning, in this peculiar need to visit, however briefly, worlds somehow pre-modern in their strangeness and scant population.

Thus, poring over my maps in the months before the hike, I foresaw Loch Lomond as it really is -- a beautiful lake with many historical associations, but also a lake that serves as a recreational area for the urban residents of Edinburgh and Glasgow. But north of the lake, the trail would leave the modern world, in my imagining, and wend its way into the world of romance. I would cross the Bridge of Orchy, an ancient landmark in the wilderness marking the entrance to the moors of the North. A bridge that I somehow associated with Tolkien's Last Bridge, crossing the River Bruinen. I saw myself fighting off Dark Riders in front of me, while defending against trolls attacking my flanks.

The trail enters Rannoch Moor, crossing vast reaches of bog and grasslands -- a playground for Macbeth's witches, for hobgoblins and will-o'-the-wisps -- skirting the base of dark hills with darker names: Beínn Toaig and Meall a'Bhùiridh, Beíenn a'Chrulaiste and Buachaille Etive Mor. It leads down to the isolated Kingshouse Hotel, an ancient establishment that's been greeting travelers, smugglers and cattle drovers for over two centuries, an inn that recalled -- again, in the fevered imaginings of my mind -- Tolkien's "Prancing Pony" inn at Bree. The trail leaves "Bree" behind, and climbs back up to the moor by the sixteen switchbacks of the Devil's Staircase, thence descending into the isolated lochside village of Kinlochleven.

I would be wandering in a land of enchantment.

Now, despite your impression, I'm not an idiot. I know I live in the 21st century. I know that the fairies and goblins have long since been chased from Scotland. But it's possible to think on two levels simultaneously, right? Staring at the map, my rational mind clearly observed that the trail rarely wanders far from the A82 tourist road that runs from Glasgow, north to Fort William, and on to Inverness. But on my trail map, the A82 is merely a faint line, less prominant than the bright red line of the West Highland Way trail. The secret of a successful Scottish hike -- for me -- was to likewise subordinate the sights and sounds of that irritating A82 to the romantic imaginings of my own mind while I was actually on the trail.

This I'm fully capable of doing.

I sometimes think that everything is fiction and that travel is something that happens in your head.
--Paul Theroux

Exactly, Mr. Theroux. Exactly.

So it was a great hike. Wonderful exercise. Dazzling scenery. And eight days walking through mysterious regions where, at any moment, I might have encountered a Celtic sprite, a masked highwayman, a MacDonald or Campbell dressed for battle, a Brigadoon wedding.

I didn't, actually, of course. But what I did see, and even what I only dreamed, was far more enjoyable than watching the nosedive of the American economy and the rioting in English cities. Thanks, Scotland! I'll be back again some day.

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Photos on Facebook can be seen by clicking here.