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 entičre. 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 Keflavik. 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 emerge on Ferry Road, a hundred yards from the B&B. Good luck, that.
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