Eight months ago, I moved to Edinburgh, but it was only from afar that I saw it for the first time.
A self-proclaimed city person, I never really thought of the importance of taking a break from the cobblestones, the crowds and the grey sandstone of my neighbourhood’s tenements. But this weekend, I felt fed up.
The Pentlands were calling. I’d seen this guy on Twitter* smoking with a cow there. I needed that picture. I got on a bus, walked through Oxgangs, across the motorway, then past the golfers. I went too far and got myself lost. I was east of the hills now; frustrated, I just started going up.
Within a few minutes, I was huffing and puffing through brush at the foothills. The slope was steep, and of course I was slipping with the wrong shoes at my feet.
I kept climbing, weary from the cold, the wind and my burning lungs. The view softened the blow, but it was clear I was out of shape.
On my way up, an older man with two older dogs stopped to chat with me; he looked just about as beat up as I was. The dogs were looking spry, though, another hit to my pride.
The ground was soft, damp and hard on the knees, as I expected Scottish soil would be. Taking a breather, I turned around to see Edinburgh emerging behind Blackford Hill. I couldn’t stop now, without seeing it all.
After 30 painful minutes, shaken and out of breath, I finally reached the top, where a cairn was waiting for me. I could see the whole River Forth, Edinburgh’s spires and steeples, its castle, Arthur’s Seat and buildings I’d never noticed from the city’s streets.
They stood out like chess pieces on a board in its endgame.
It was breathtaking, but the view was disappearing. The weather was turning on me. From the wonder of the sight, I was now alone in the grey, wet. Only the wind and rain hitting my jacket were keeping me company. It was quiet. The kind of quiet I hadn’t had in months.
The Pentland Hills kept coming. In those clouds, I kept trekking from cairn to cairn. I can’t remember a time I’d held a smile that long. Grounded, I broke the damp silence with a single flick of my lighter, hidden away in my cupped hands.
Fully recovered from the unimpressive effort of my summit, my confidence took me off-piste.
I roamed the rolling hills, excited by the long grass that made each step lighter than the last. There, somewhere between Allermuir and Caerketton Hills, I was staring at a pile that had been dropped by something way bigger than me.
“There’s no way.” I followed the droppings down a hill, over a slope, and there they were, looking up at me.
Highland cows.
Clouds were dissipating now, showing the landscape behind them. I’d found myself alone with the herd.
There was nothing original about this experience.
Hundreds of thousands of tourists and students have had the same afternoon before me. There was wonder in it, though. I felt lucky to be here in this city I’d felt trapped in just hours before.
I was excited and awed by these cows I’d seen all over the gift shops, the postcards, fuzzy slippers and mugs. They’d made the pain in my legs and feet feel worthwhile.
They were just cows, somehow mystifying to people like me, roaming their land and bothering them for the simple shutter of our cameras.
The Scots may be annoyed by the 2 million annual travellers streaming into their land, disrupting their town, but they don’t spend their pay cheques to come here for nothing.
It means to them as much as it means to the Scottish, even if they’re just cows.
*Editor’s Note – We are aware that Elon Musk renamed Twitter to X in 2023, but we think this is dumb, so we will continue to refer to Twitter as Twitter.
