boundary: border, fringe, periphery, perimeter, brink, horizon, barrier,
frontier: edge, limit, bounds, confines, verge, borderline, borderlands
Let's face it, I'm not the most adventurous traveler in the world. As I write this in
July of 2014, two friends are on their way to Africa, to climb Kilimanjaro. I envy
them, but I'll never do that. Nor am I likely ever to go to Peru, or India, or
Vietnam, or even Greece. Travel is a vast smorgasbord, the whole of it far more
than anyone can ingest entière. I'm not one of those who spend their holidays in
the same cottage at the same beach every year, but I do like my home-away-
from-home places--Quebec City, Edinburgh, Plockton--and I don't stray far
from the North Atlantic Arc. The most exotic place I've been is the Faroe
Islands; my dreams are of Fair Isle, St Kilda, Harrington Harbour, St-Pierre &
Miquelon. I find more than enough to explore in my little slice of the planet.
There's always another corner to turn, another angle and a different light in
which to view the familiar or discover the overlooked.
Nevertheless, I do think it's important to stretch my boundaries, to go
somewhere each year that I haven't been before. When Icelandair became the
airline of choice for this trip, a layover in Iceland, unvisited for quite some time,
seemed obvious. When Win signed on to meet me there, our discussions led
inevitably to the remote Westfjords, which we've talked about visiting for years.
Whether we might actually get there in early November was a matter of some
doubt. We booked our lodgings and crossed our fingers.
It's impossible to go to Iceland without thinking about such adventurers as Eirik
the Red and Leif Eiriksson, who literally went where no one had gone before.
Eirik founded the Greenland colony (having been exiled from Norway and
Iceland in short succession), and his sons pushed farther west still, in search of
new lands. When they arrived in Vinland (generally accepted as being modern
Newfoundland), they ran into the descendants of people who had migrated into
the Americas via the Bering Strait, many thousands of years before. Thus was
closed the circle of the human diaspora. The Vinland colony was short-lived, in
no small part because of conflict with the locals; but it left its mark.
Speaking of boundaries and conflict, I spent a few days at the beginning of the
trip in the border region of Scotland and England. It's peaceful country these
days, but it suffered centuries of violence as the two countries squabbled. It
seems doubtful that the upcoming referendum on Scottish independence will
set off a new round of border wars, but it does make one think about the
significance of a meandering line through the desolate Cheviot Hills, one that
has shifted and blurred and at times disappeared altogether, as boundaries do.
Friday 4 October 2013--Icelandair provides as direct a flight as there is from
Boston to Scotland. Time in the air is six and a half hours, with a short layover
at Keflavík. While waiting to change, I look out and feel the allure of the
Icelandic countryside. The stopover on the return trip will be my first visit to
Iceland in a dozen years. I'm looking forward to it...but I'll miss Amsterdam.
Land in Glasgow, pick up my hire car, and set out for Edinburgh. The Skoda
has an automatic transmission, the first such I've ever gotten here, and I'm almost
annoyed enough to go back and ask for a manual. I don't have the energy. I try
to avoid driving very far on the first day over, and the hour or so on the M8 is
pushing it, maybe. Entering Edinburgh, I get into the wrong lane and end up in a
shopping center car park. Pull into a space, shut the car off, and take a nap.
Arrive at the B&B on Ferry Road, check in, and stroll into town. Stop first
along Scotland Street, setting for Alexander McCall Smith's 44 Scotland
Street series. There is no 44--the highest number is 41, 26 on the even side.
Then drop in at Cadenhead's whisky shop, at the foot of the Royal Mile, to
chat with Mark and Neil. There is sampling involved. Dinner at the Black Bull
in the Grassmarket; the Bow Bar is crowded, so I go on a pub crawl...Ensign
Ewart, Jolly Judge, the Ox, the Cumberland. Nod off in every one. Leaving
via Scotland Street, I chance upon a footpath on a long-abandoned railbed.
Maybe not the smartest thing, late at night...I don't even know where it goes. I e
merge on Ferry Road, a hundred yards from the B&B. Good luck, that.
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