Day Eight

 8^th May 2009 SCOTLAND

A bucket of porridge and a girl with no name

I lay awake, hands behind my head. It is still early; it is that in-between time when the night is done, and the new day has not yet started… Today is the start of the second week of walking… seven days closer to stepping into a church that sits on the south coast of England… a church that I had never walked into before…and why? Because the last time I was in this church I had not yet figured out how to walk, I was a babe in arms… carried in… given a name… offered up to God…probably got passed around from one strange face to another under the watchful eye of a proud mother…I’m guessing my two older brothers were trying to figure out what all the fuss was about… needless to say I don’t remember any of this. Eighteen months later we did all this again, different church and town…for boy number four…I was probably looking up to my dad and wondering what all the fuss was about. This was my family…two older brothers, a younger brother, a mum and a dad… a good place to be... Years later all four boys would follow their dad into the military and create families of their own… and that is what happens… one generation follows another and then another…a never-ending story… each generation trying to make the world a better place for the next… sometimes times we mess up… taking the world a number of steps backwards and other times we do good.

The family unit is universal, regardless of where it is we are from, the colour of our skin, whether we have a faith or not…the family trumps all of these things. If it were possible to bring someone back to our time from ten thousand years ago, they would understand little of the world we live in now… smart phones, driverless cars and flying machines that can take hundreds of people halfway round the world in less than a day (…hmm not sure I understand any of that either… but that’s not the point). This guy from ten thousand years passed, would without doubt understand the overwhelming love a parent feels when holding their new-born baby or the joy of watching their little one taking their first steps…and at the other end of the scale, he or she would also understand the heartbreak felt by a parent at the loss of a child. The family is the unchanging common denominator… that lies at the heart of who and what it is we are… be it ten thousand year on either side of where it is we stand today this will not change… other things will… but the preciousness and the value of the family is both unchanging and eternal…

… ah but what of these thoughts… time I was out of bed, I have a long day ahead of me if I’m to reach Fort William by a sensible time this evening I need to be making a move. I shift my thoughts to whether or not I will get the chance to start the day with a breakfast inside of me. As I hobble down the stairs I cannot help wondering if the short day I had yesterday made any difference at all. The legs still ache.

Clement tells me I need to help him out; he has made far too much porridge and doesn’t want to throw it away… I guess he did give me a place to stay last night… it would be wrong not to help him out. Five minutes later, I’m sat at a table with something close to a bucket of porridge in front of me.

As I work my way through the porridge… the noise of a hostel waking up fades into the background… my thoughts drifting back into the week just gone… the legs had walked through open moorland, low lying hills and alongside lochs; they had picked up woodland tracks and country lanes, hobbled in and out of villages and small towns… according to my thumbprint scale I reckon I have covered a distance a little short of hundred and fifty miles… the days I had been caught in the rain had finished with a roof over my head and a place to dry my clothes… I had only slept out in the open twice, once in open moorland in amongst the heather and the other time in woodland close to the side of a road… I had been fed every day… I cannot help but wonder if I had been given a little bit of grace to see me through this first week and that the rest of the walk from here on would just get a whole lot tougher.

Still lost in my own thoughts I find myself in the kitchen standing at the sink washing up. A young lady comes up alongside with her breakfast dishes and says, "You wash, and I’ll dry." "Yeah ok." We talk a little… she has taken a week’s holiday and is walking the full length of the Great Glen Way from Inverness (on the east coast) to Fort William (on the west coast). She tells me that she was impressed with the amount of porridge one person can eat…I laugh… and explain a little of what it is I’m doing "looking at the map I will not get the chance to eat again and till the end of the day…and maybe not even then… hence the reason for having porridge coming out of my ears"… she laughs.

A little before eight my boots are back on; I am about to step out of the hostel when the girl from the kitchen tells me to wait a moment… I stand outside looking up at the sky… looks like another day of sunshine and rain…a good day for talking to rainbows. The kitchen girl steps out of the hostel holding something in her hands (…crumbs… I call her the kitchen girl…I never thought to ask her name… how rubbish is that). She hands me a wrapped-up bundle. "This is half of my lunchbox; I would like you to have it." "I can’t take that… I did not share my story in the hope that you would feed me." "I know that and if you had I would be giving you nothing." "Thank you, but I cannot …" I am cut of mid-sentence. "Please take it… I would like to play a small role in the story of your walk." I am moved by this heart felt gesture, I wanted to give this girl I met in a kitchen the kind of hug a big brother would give to a younger sister… but instead I offer my hand. "Thank you I really appreciate your kindness, it is good walking knowing that I have food on my back. Thank you again." I also tell her to take all the care in the world. The handshake turns in to a wave… and with that I start to walk… twenty minutes later I’m digging out my raincoat and again talking to a rainbow.

It is not long before I am walking along the shores of Loch Lochy, I am heading in a south-westerly direction, the skies above and in front of me are of white cloud and blue skies, when looking over my right shoulder to the north the skies are a dark grey… and like me a rainbow seems to be stuck in the middle of the two weather systems. Most people enjoy a blue sky, I am no different… but there is something also to be said about a landscape that has a heavy grey sky as a backdrop… the mood is different… add a few rays of sun and the colours of the trees and distant hills become more dramatic against the grey, then throw in a rainbow, and a heavy downpour on the horizon that is dragging the clouds back down on to the hills, on top of this add the smells of both a damp woodland floor and the incoming rain… yeah... "This is my island under the sun"… with many times clouds stuck in between... and that’s ok. I cannot imagine waking up on an island knowing that each and every day would be blue skies and sunshine.

I am in and out of my raincoat all morning and the early part of the afternoon. I decide to walk for another hour before stopping for a bite to eat. I think again about the value of the family. It is within the family we learn about all the different aspects of love… The love between a husband and a wife… The love between parent and child... The love between brothers and sisters… the love children have for their parents… and it doesn’t stop there we have the love of grandparents, uncles and aunties… should not that love learnt in the family spill out to our neighbours and our communities, society, the nation and world… what a world that would be…a global village… one huge family under God. A place where hate does not exist… disagreements maybe but never hate… hmm are these no more than just impossible thoughts, I don’t think so… everything mankind has ever made, be it the very first wheel or that plane that can fly hundreds of people half way round the world in less than a day started life as a thought, an idea, a dream… if we can imagine a better world, that in itself tells me it can and will happen… our job is to bring that day about as soon as we can… every day saved would be one less day of unnecessary pain and heartbreak.

My stomach lets me know that an hour has passed… the rain has taken another break… I find a place next to the loch; away from the breeze… the water is both incredibly clear and still… I take out the wrapped up bundle the girl at the hostel gave me and sit down on my bag…this is not half of the kitchen girl’s lunch… this is all of it… two sandwiches, an apple, a chocolate bar and a carton of juice… I am again moved by the generosity of the people I have met. I sit for ten, fifteen minutes and more… eating sandwiches while looking out over the loch and one eye up at the sky… I bring to mind some of the people that have helped to make the last seven days possible… the noisy cyclists who had given me their no longer needed sweets and chocolate bars… Arthur and Irina who had driven up overnight to ensure the walk started with a cooked breakfast, gave me a stack of sandwiches, a can of Irn-Bru and then took away my get out of jail free card… the lady that had popped up from behind the bar and made me jump and then dug out a tea pot…the Rev Goskirk who found me a bed, fed me and shared stories of passed adventures while sat in front of his fire place… the shift manager at Skiach services and his waitress who dropped a bread roll onto my plate and then told me that what I was doing was amazing (we all need to be told that once in a while) … the Rev Pallett and his wife for taking me in and then taking me out to a restaurant and the following morning sent me on my way with clean clothes and sandwiches… the Priory Hotel in Beauly for tea and cake…the guy in the chip shop at Drumadrochit … and around the corner the lady running the Backpackers Hostel who allowed me to stay, opened a cupboard and shared a coffee… Hardy at the Lochside Hostel for feeding me and having the patience to show me a better way to use my phone… the Rev Adrian for giving me his trust to take care of his church for the night… Julie who sat down and shared a pot of tea at the Thistle Stop café…the couple from Stafford for the stories they shared plus an evening meal, Clement who allowed me to stay last night and who gave me a the bucket of porridge and as I bite into to my apple while sitting at the southern end of this fresh water Loch I say thank you to the girl from the kitchen, who I think right now is probably going hungry so as I didn’t have to… this notion of becoming one family under God it is not just a pretty idea... the people I have met these past seven days have shown me something of what that world would be like… a world I believe we all hold in a place deep inside of us regardless of who, where or when we lived.

 I’m thinking I could sit on the shores of this loch for the rest of the day… but I am reminded of the guy a few mornings back who gave the old sofa I was sat on a kick "you need to be making a move" and he’s right... I push myself up from my bag, feeling like a hundred years old…the legs are stiff…as I start walking and the legs again start to ease up the years fall away, it’s not long before I’m back to being in my mid-forties… oh boy…maybe if I walk a little faster, I can drop a few more years. Looking up at the sky I see a little more grey and a little less blue but seems to be staying dry. I’ve picked up the path running alongside the canal this makes the walking easier… canals are built on level ground and in straight lines. The hills to the right of me (the Northwest Highlands) and those to the left of me (the Grampian Mountains) are the two sides of a geological fault line that came together close to 700 million years ago… and in doing so created this great glen that runs the width of the country… 700 million years… crumbs… forty something is maybe not so old after all. The canal is to the right of me and the River Lochy is a stone’s throw away to the left of me… a pleasant afternoon walk in amongst the trees and bird song and away from the road. Towards the end of the afternoon I reach the southern end of the canal and come across "Neptune’s Staircase". This is a staircase of eight locks, an impressive piece of engineering… but something else catches my eye… a caravan selling hot drinks…I again explain myself and again I am given a tea plus a piece of cake.

For the last stretch of the walk into Fort William I am back to walking on tarmac. The sky above is still a mix of blue and grey; I have stayed dry for much of the afternoon, I’m hoping for this last hour I can keep it that way. I pass a lorry with steam and water coming out of the grill being hitched up to a breakdown truck… no doubt the broken lorry will be dragged off to some workshop to be put right… feels like a long time ago since I climbed out of that Woolworths truck and closed the door behind me… hmm it’s not that far away before I push a door open and step into Oatridge College… scary.

It’s a little after six before I half walk and half hobble into Fort William, my job now is to try and find a place to stay. I try a couple of hostels; they are both completely full I am told there is an international mountain biking event going on over the weekend and that I would be lucky to find a bed anywhere tonight. I decide to find the train station… with the hope of finding a bench under a canopy… maybe even a waiting room to take shelter for the night. I am a little hungry but that’s ok, I still have a chocolate bar plus a carton of juice again thanks to my kitchen girl with no name. On the way to finding the station I come across a hotel… well I guess there is no harm in asking… I step inside… The manager, his name is Paul, tells me the same as the hostels have… there is no space anywhere in town. I say thank you and turn to leave… "Maybe I cannot give you a bed…but what I can do is give you a dinner." He hands me a menu, "go find a table". Before disappearing he tells me that the steak is good and as for the apple pie you won’t get better. I am again stuck for what to say… there has to be a better way to say thank you than just saying "Thank you".

Close to an hour later I am back on the street heading towards the train station, I have both a full belly and a grateful heart… people are good… I hear somebody shout out my name. I turn around… and I see Tom, the hitchhiker I shared breakfast with a few days back… we shake hands as if we had known each other for the longest time. Tom asks if I have a place to stay, "no not yet". "If you’re looking to just get out of the rain, I can show you a place." Twenty minutes later we have set up base camp in an open porch at the back of a church… providing the wind doesn’t change direction we will stay dry.

The day is all but done… seven minutes left and it’ll be midnight… a new day. Tom is asleep… me I’m in my sleeping bag leaning up against the church wall, looking out at the night sky from under the porch… I look for stars but don’t see any…its looking as if tomorrow will be another grey day.

I have no idea why, but the broken-down truck comes to mind. The mechanics in the workshop will only be able to fix the truck if they first know how a not broken truck works… if that makes any sense… likewise to fix a broken humanity we first need a blueprint an understanding to show us how things were meant to be…before it all somehow went wrong… to gain that understanding I think would also give us an even deeper insight into what the purpose of life is all about …ah but its late… those kind of questions will have to wait for another day… what I do know is this; as sure as there are stars behind the clouds that sit above this church… there is also a love hidden behind the sadness and heartbreak of the human experience… that is far greater than any star filled universe… we know that love to be there… just as we see a glimpse of a star behind broken clouds or a ray of sunlight breaking through the canopy of a woodland… love will also find its way into this world be it through the laughter of a stranger with a tea towel in hand, a reverend pushing two benches together to make a bed or even in a bucket of porridge.