Edinburgh: “By leaves we live”

Statue of Sir Walter Scott at the Foot of Waverley Monument

Waverley Monument to Sir Walter Scott at St. David and Princes Street

  




Pages in books, trees in parks--Edinburgh cherishes both kinds of leaves. Monuments to writers, museums devoted to writing and writers, quoted words carved in stone--writers sprout all over the city, as do leaves in trees, parks, and gardens.

Salisbury Crags a Short Walk from Old Town Edinburgh

Laburnum Trailing into the Water of Leith in the Heart of Dean Village

The Scottish Poetry Library has adopted Patrick Geddes’s words “By leaves we live” as their motto, and the city has, too.

Dean Village and the Water of Leith

 



Geddes (1854-1932) was a philosopher, sociologist, geographer, historian, botanist, zoologist, scholar of poetics, and urban planner, and the four words "By leaves we live" come from this part of his 1918 farewell lecture to his students at University College Dundee, where he was Chair of Botany: 

"How many people think twice about a leaf? Yet the leaf is the chief product and phenomenon of Life: this is a green world, with animals comparatively few and small, and all dependent on the leaves. 

Students Grilling to Celebrate the End of the Academic Year in The Meadows

"By leaves we live. Some people have strange ideas that they live by money. They think energy is generated by the circulation of coins. But the world is mainly a vast leaf-colony, growing on and forming a leafy soil, not a mere mineral mass: and we live not by the jingling of our coins, but by the fullness of our harvests."

"Poetree" at the Scottish Poetry Library

 





In Edinburgh, in 2011, a wonderful commingling of books’ and trees’ leaves occurred at the Scottish Poetry Library. The first anonymous gift of an altered-book sculpture appeared there. 

The sculptor, in a note attached to the gift, said, "We know that a library is so much more than a building full of books… a book is so much more than pages full of words… This is for you in support of libraries, books, words, ideas…" Inside the gilded eggshell at the foot of the "Poetree" is a poem by Edwin Morgan. 

Book Sculpture at the Writers' Museum

The first 11 sculptures appeared in 2011, and more have since, including the one in the Writers' Museum made from Ian Rankin's Hide and Seek.

More leaves of books and trees: for the summer of 2018, the Royal Botanic Garden is exhibiting the original art by Jackie Morris for Lost Words, the book of poems by Robert Macfarlane responding to the choice of the editors of the Oxford Junior Dictionary to remove a number of words related to the natural world and replace them with words related to computers. The poem, or spell, as Macfarlane calls it, for the removed word acorn, printed on the wall beside the painting is: 

"As flake is to blizzard, as

Curve is to sphere, as knot is to net, as

One is to many, as coin is to money, as

    bird is to flock, as

Rock is to mountain, as drop is to fountain, as

    spring is to river, as glint is to glitter, as

Near is to far, as wind is to weather, as

    feather is to flight, as light is to star, as

    kindness is to good, so acorn is to wood."

Fortunately, people in Edinburgh, have both such open and leafy places as the Royal Botanic Garden, the Water of Leith pathway, Holyrood Park, and the Meadows, as well as reminders of Scotland's great writers carved in paving stones and printed on the walls inside the Parliament Building.

Electronic Counter for Cyclists Passing through The Meadows

 

 

Next: Old and New in Edinburgh

"Old Smoky [Edinburgh]: Best of All the Towns" Robert Fergusson 1750-1774

The Seven Wonders of Skye

Eilean Donan Castle along the Road to Skye

The seven: Tania, sunny days, passing places and low verges, Coire Lagan, veggie haggis,  the Bathroom of Power, and playfulness (no legendary dour Scots dragging around here).

  

Tania: We planned our trip to Scotland around her Blà Bheinn B&B, with its 2 guest rooms and views of the Red and Black Cuillin--Blà Bheinn means Blue Mountain, and a cuillin is a mountain range in Scots Gaelic. We booked our 7 nights with her last fall and then planned flights from home and lodging in Edinburgh around this core on Skye. Tania was, indeed, the heart of Skye for us, with her breakfasts and conversation in the mornings and greetings when we returned in the evenings, including the anxious one when we returned through smoke and two fire-brigade road blocks and learned of her day watching a heath-and-forest fire approach and even jump the road toward her house.

Smoke and the Black Cuillin from Our Window

Field and Fire across the Road

The flames and smoke were daunting and, sadly, a little familiar for us. The fires continued to burn while we were there and after we left, having gotten underground into the peat, but finally they were contained and put out. Through it all, Tania was our friendly Skye host, advisor on where to walk and drive, and awarder of praise when we hiked and scrambled all the way into Coire Lagan. 

Saltire and Thistle Made of Chives

And, on top of everything, she taught us the importance of food’s not “sprawling all over the plate”--she uses rice molds to round up scrambled eggs in an orderly way and decorates them with the Saltire--the wide cross of the Scottish flag--and thistle--national flower--made of chive leaves and flowers. 

Sunny Carbost and Black Cuillin

Sunny Skye: An exhibit at the Talisker Distillery in Carbost says that "to live on Skye you need to be resilient, inventive, humorous, tough, self-sufficient, waterproof, patient, lucky." That need for a waterproof body and soul alludes to the typical weather on Skye, but we were there in the middle of a record-setting 22-day dry spell. 

Loch Coruisk

Loch Coruisk in the Foreground and Loch Scavaig, Background

We were prepared for Loch Coruisk to look like J. M. W. Turner’s painting of a grand landscape battered by a windy storm strong enough to bend the Cuillin above the lake into shapes like ocean waves, but we did OK with our sunny day there.

But Sheep Don't Care about Passing Places

Passing places make single-track roads possible; low verges make them scary. When two cars meet, one of them stops at--or backs up to--a bit of pavement off to the side, some of these marked with square white signs that say "passing place." We learned to translate the "low verge" road signs to mean "expect stretches ahead of low or no shoulder." Single-track roads with passing places slow traffic down to a kind of do-si-do and mostly lead to a lot of smiling and waving on the way to some car park at a castle, trailhead, dock, or broch.

Mirror at Dunvegan Castle

 




The castle we visited was Dunvegan, first built in the 13th century and still the seat of the Clan MacLeod, 

the trailheads were several, the dock was  Elgol,

Walking Back to the Car from the Elgol Dock after Taking the Bella Jane to Loch Coruisk

and the broch was Dun Beag Broch, one of northwest Scotland’s roundhouses built of double concentric dry-laid stone walls 2,300 to 1,900 years ago.

Dun Beag Broch

Dun Beag Broch and the Loch Beyond

Coire Lagan’s trail starts at the end of one of those passing-places-low-verges roads. (A coire--the Gaelic word is spelled and pronounced "corrie" in English--is a cirque; this one's name means "the corrie of the little hollow.") It's hard to imagine this walk's challenges and beauties just from the numbers--under 3 miles one-way with a bit under 2,000 feet elevation gain; nevertheless, those numbers connect the walk’s beauties and challenges.

Loch Brittle in the Distance from the Coire Lagan Trail and Stream

Gabbro All Around at the Coire

In the Scree, with the Trail Beyond, and Loch Brittlle in the Background

The elevation affords expansive views out to Loch Brittle and intimate ones up into the peaks that tightly surround the coire’s lochan (small loch), but much of that elevation gain happens a bit abruptly right beneath the coire and happens steeply in scree and gabbro (coarse-grained igneous rock similar to basalt). 

Loch an Fhir-Bhallaich along the Coire Lagan Trail

Still, one of the best parts of this walk was talking with other walkers, among them people coming down who consulted on whether I should turn around or continue and also, on our way back down, a bus driver from Skye who had bicycled long distance through Wyoming and Montana decades ago and remembered Sam Braxton’s bike shop in Missoula. He showed us his way down through the steep section and distracted me enough that I relaxed; we easily made our way through it with him, his nephew, and two friends. It's wonderful when a beautiful place brings people together.

Veggie haggis and the Bathroom of Power: we found these two wonders in one place, Munro's Bar in the Taigh Ailean Hotel.

Veggie Haggis

 

Two signs among many in The Bathroom of Power: 

And the Wonderful Playfulness of Skye: plenty of this was at the Taigh Ailean 

Wineglass and Crystal Chandelier at Munro's Bar

and also at the Old Inn in Carbost, where the staff t-shirt says

(It's the only pub in Carbost.)

Next up: Edinburgh, where we spent almost two weeks. Sorting through pictures and thoughts could take a wee bit of time.