Look at the whale

Friday, November 7th

I woke up this morning and knew even before I looked at my Garmin that I’d recovered from the cold.  All week, it’s been telling me that I’m nearing the end of life with horribly low body battery and even worse sleep scores.  This morning, I was back in the 80s for my sleep scores and almost fully charged battery.  In short, I was ready to take on the Old Man of Storr hike.  There are some adventures on trips that I just have expectations for them being the gems of the trip.  Hiking Cinque Terre was one.  My day of hiking in Slovenia. And not so secretly, today was one of them.  I didn’t research all too much for this trip, but knew that if any day was going to almost demand perfect weather and my stamina, it would be today.  After a rocky week of both hellacious rain and a nasty cold, I had my doubts.  But waking up feeling so much better and seeing the light of full moon (which meant it wasn’t overcast for once!) gave me hope for today.

Back at the start of the trip, Karl and his daughter Inna gave a presentation on what he’d hope we’d get to see this week.  His laundry list of sights was long and he knew it was industrious. But at the end of the slide show, Inna presented us with an image of a whale.  She said we’d take good photos, we’d take bad photos.  We’d see things we loved and things we weren’t so excited about.  But in any event we ought to remember that we’re on vacation, we’re here to absorb and not just take the shot and tick the box. She told us to stop and look at the whale.  Appreciate what we’re seeing. And throughout the week, one of us would periodically say to the group “look at the whale”, especially when we were so heads down trying to compose and dial-in our best shots.

Birds woke me at 5:45 when it was still fully pitch black out.  I jumped out of bed and used the Merlin app to discover it was the European robins again.  I saw the moonlight on my windowsill and was thrilled that it meant that at least part of the sky was clear on the morning we were planning to shoot sunrise.  We met at the vans at 7:15 and drove to an open field that was facing the Old Man of Storr, the basalt rock formation that rose over 1000 feet over us.  The very same rock formation I was planning to hike later that morning.

All set up on tripods with our settings dialed in, we started shooting in the blue hour, just before the sun starts to light the sky pink, when everything is toned blue.  It looked for a while like we might luck out and the clouds behind us started to brighten and perhaps it would cast a golden glow on the Old Man.  Alas, while it did not rain (at last!), the clouds did sufficiently cover up the direct light of the sun so that the Old Man never glowed golden, but we did get some pretty dramatic skies nonetheless.

We zipped back to our hotel for breakfast at 9 (same as last two days) and headed back out to the Old Man of Storr.  Of the ten of us, only 3 (Jamie, Cynthia and me) decided to do the hike.  I was a bit worried because I’d had a pretty serious coughing fit at breakfast, but I took one more dose of cold meds before we left the hotel and hoped for the best.  Karl led us up the climb.  There was a pretty nice (but steep!) path for the first part of it, then it became what Cynthia first said was a “proper set of steps” but really was just uneven pavers set to lessen the steepness of certain parts.  It was a mile and a half of climbing (106 floors) and 45 minutes up.  Karl pointed out a flat-topped rock formation way up and said it was “photographers’ mound” where folks like us went for the best angles of the best views.  That’s where we were headed.

The climb wasn’t hard but it was more a matter of staying sure-footed.  Between the uneven steps and a bit of mud here and there, it was important to keep my eyes open.  I made it a bit sweatier than when I left street-level.  But what I found up top was so worth it.  Beyond worth it.  It was quite simply the most spectacular view I’ve seen in a while. In one direction, it was the rock formation of the Old Man of Storr.  In another it was rolling hills out to the North Sea.  We set up our tripods and started taking photos with Karl as our consultant.  The light was amazing and kept changing from one minute to the next.  I was happy with what I was seeing (but of course won’t know how well I caught it until I get these photos home).  After 20 minutes or so, Karl told us to put down the camera and breathe in what we were seeing. Really look with our own eyes and not through a lens.  Look at that whale!! He’d been serious when he seemingly joked that he got misty-eyed by how great the light was this morning and he fired off many shots of his own.  I felt blessed.  What a perfect moment in time.  What a perfect whale.

It only took us a half hour to get down.  We met up with our fellow travelers and Don and drove across the nearby Quiraing region to the village of Uig where we had lunch at the Uig Hotel.  Uig itself is a tiny little village on a tiny nook of a harbor off the North Sea.  All the houses are tiny white cottages, some with thatched roofs, pointing face forward right to the sea.  Lunch was really good.  I had a sandwich of hummus, sweet chilli, roasted peppers on brown bread and with a side of fries.  I washed it all down with Irn Bru, which is a Scottish citrus flavored soda.

After lunch we zipped back up into the Quiraing which is similar rock formations with views over a steep valley and out to the sea.  While the sun had pretty much given up for the day by this time, we were lucking out with the late day light and clouds.  We selected several spots along the paths that wound their way around the area.  I enjoyed this for the immensity of it, for feeling the perspective of being a small speck in such a grand natural world.  The colors, the light, the air and the immense scope of it all combined to make for a completely magical afternoon.  The time here just flew by as we left well after sunset.

We arrived back at the hotel around 5:45 and dinner was at 7.  I needed a shower after my long sweaty morning and I also got a head start on packing since we head back to Edinburgh tomorrow.  I had my favorite courses from the last couple days (the bleu cheese and fig croquette, salmon and chocolate gingerbread) and enjoyed the conversation around the table.

Tomorrow we get a bit of a lie-in as we’re not leaving until 9:30.  I’m tired but blissfully so. The activity today felt good, I felt good and I feel so lucky to have gotten to see that amazing corner of the world. It was another good day…