Archives

Note #157: Back from Scotland (2025.7.16)

We got back from Scotland late last week, and since then I’ve been trying to rest up and get back into the groove of normal life. We were only gone for two weeks, but somehow it seemed like a lot longer than that. We saw and did and experienced so much that time seemed to stretch out—not in a bad way, mind you, but as if the normal passage of time was insufficient to contain everything.

There is so much that I could say about our trip, but if I were to say everything I would be writing a book. So I’ll keep this brief and just focus on something that was continuously impressed upon me during our adventures. Before we left, I—perhaps rather naively—expected things not to have changed much. Seoul is a maelstrom of constant change, but it is also a city of ten million people who do not like to sit still. It has always felt to me that the Scottish highlands were more rooted in the earth, and thus less susceptible to change. Yes, I am aware that there is some romanticizing going on there, but there is no doubt that it is a different place. So, while I did not expect to find things [i]exactly[/i] as I had left them, I was not expecting any major changes.

I suppose that, in some ways, I was not wrong. A lot of the places we visited last time were still there, and the Speyside Way itself (the trail we walked in 2016) was of course still there as well. But the trail had changed: The spur to Dufftown is no longer an official part of the trail, and the inland end point is no longer Aviemore but Newtonmore, roughly 31 km farther along. All of the distilleries were still there, but in the intervening years Macallan had built an entirely new distillery and visitor center; it had been under construction when we visited in 2016, which is why I wanted to go back to see it. Aberlour was also undergoing construction when we visited this time, so there were no tours, and the old restaurant in the Glenfiddich distillery had been turned into a bar and shop.

We did quite a few new things this time—things that we had not gotten to do last time because we were walking—but even the places we were revisiting all felt at least a little different, so much so that Speyside in 2025 almost didn’t feel like the same place as Speyside in 2016. COVID had a lot to do with it, of course; the restaurant in Glenfiddich had shut down during the pandemic and never opened up again. As it did elsewhere, the pandemic seems to have brought permanent change to Speyside rather than just being a temporary departure from ordinary life. I think we got so used to doing without certain things that, even when we could bring those things back, it didn’t seem worth the effort. Had it not been for COVID, I think things might have been a little more familiar than they were.

Of course, even had everything remained exactly the same, I have changed a lot over the past nine years. For one, I’m a good bit older, so walking with a full pack on my back is not quite as easy as it used to be. It was worse for HJ, with her spate of leg injuries in the intervening years. She was a trouper when she needed to be, but she also declared that this was our last backpacking trip. I’m not as ready to give up on the idea as she is, but I have accepted the fact that we will not be doing another backpacking trip together. I may do walks with a pack, but it will either be by myself or with someone else—and I will also be taking a lighter pack.

Physical changes aside, I’m also not the same person I was nine years ago. All of these things led me to a blindingly obvious realization fairly early on: Memories are not only tied to specific places, they are tied to specific times as well. We might have gone back to the highlands this time, but we could never really go back. Like I said above, this is obvious; everyone knows you can never step in the same river twice. But sometimes things that you know on an intellectual level to you are brought home to you on a much more visceral level, and it can feel like a gut punch. So I tried to enjoy our trip for the completely new experience that it was, and—despite the usual challenges faced while traveling—I think I succeeded.

I realize that very little of this is about the actual trip itself. So be it. This is what I wanted to write about today. I may have more to say specifically about the trip later. I did keep a journal while we were there, so I may post some edited excerpts in the coming weeks. We’ll see. For today, though, I’ll end up saying it was a good trip.