The one part about my amazing weekend in Edinburgh that I will remember for the rest of my life is climbing to the top of Arthur's seat in Holyrood Park. At it's highest point, Arthur's Seat reaches an elevation of 251 meters, a little less than three football fields stacked vertically on top of one another. In my skinny jeans, backpack, and vans, I was expecting an easy stroll to the top of the hill (it's supposed to take roughly an hour). Well, we decided to take one of the other trails from another side of the hill and that's where things got tough. After about 10 minutes of climbing with hands and feet up a muddy, slippery, slope (for those familiar with San Marino -- think: twice as steep as Shenandoah) and another twenty minutes of walking uphill a beaten path, we reached an amazing look out point with a panaromic view of the city.
The climb up there had my heart racing and my calves burning, but as you can see, I'm well enough to take douche-y pictures along the cliffside. Well, it wouldn't really be a story if that was the real end of my journey, would it? After enjoying the view and the fresh air for about thirty minutes, Crosby asked if I wanted to keep going. "Keep going?" I wasn't sure what he was referring to, because I thought it didn't get any better than that. Well, silly old me looked behind him and saw where Arthur's Seat really was -- about another ten minute downhill (almost a backtrack) and thirty minute uphill hike away. I looked at the steep dizzying climb and cringed, but decided to leave the rest of the group that wanted to watch the sunset on the first look-out, to go ahead with him.
Crosby's a seasoned veteran at hiking so he was just zipping up this hill, but my sorry Southern-Californian-I-like-to-lay-out-on-the-beach-self, felt like dying. About half way up the almost nauseating and dishearteningly steep set of part-man-made-part-natural-made "stairs" (think: walking in a short monotonous zig zag pattern up a staircase for 200 meters uphill), I was positive that my legs were going to give. I just kept mumbling to myself "more than halfway, more than halfway!" At one point, I began to sing Paramore's "Miracle" to myself because I knew that if I didn't do something to take my mind off of the pain, I could/would have lost focus, tripped, and either rolled my way down the rocks, or passed out. When we reached the "end" of this part of the trail, I was incredibly relieved, but again, Crosby was standing there waiting for me and asked "You ready for the next hill?" I looked up and dropped a weak but audible f-bomb through my heavy breathing when I saw that we still had another hill to climb.
I knew there wasn't any turning back, though. Hell, I knew there wasn't any turning back the second I agreed to really climb to the summit. After pushing myself past physical limits that I haven't passed since high school athletics, we finally reached the peak, and when I saw the view, all of the pain suddenly left my body and the only thing I could feel was an overwhelming sense of happinness. Standing on the highest point in all of Edinburgh and being able to see a 360 degree view of the city made me feel like I was on top of the world.
In retrospect though, I must have been in a heavy state of reflection and/or exhaustion, because I didn't even take that many pictures, and the ones that I did take don't even begin to capture what it felt like to be standing on top of that hill. So all I can leave you with is my word and this:
As we began our descent I muttered, "I think I could spend the rest of my life doing this", and I meant it with all my heart.
