Mountains and Molehills (Love the Place You're In)

I am having a great time in Edinburgh - it's hard to believe that in a few days I'll be back in Kenya... A few weeks ago, when it was suddenly time to leave Kisumu and head to Scotland, I was really sad to be leaving my friends, my routine, and my beautiful place behind. But now I feel the same about Edinburgh. Am I just really lucky to be in awesome places, or would I love living anywhere? Something to contemplate.

Meanwhile, check out some pictures from the hike we did on Saturday.


We drove past this horrible sight on the way to the bottom of the hill...apparently it is sort of Scottish tradition to kill moles that are making molehills in your grazing fields and impale them on the barbs of your barbed wire fence. Probably not a very effective warning to other moles that are underground and mostly blind. Maybe someone should write a mole Watership Down where one far-sighted mole can sense all its dead conspecifics up on the fence. Seeing as my impression of how moles act when anthropomorphized comes entirely from Redwall, such a book would be extremely difficult to understand, but would involve a lot of delicious descriptions of "deeper'n'ever turnip'n'tater'n'beetroot pie." Ohh Brian Jacques, too bad you're not still alive to write it. [EDIT: Apparently there is a novel about mole society which I have somehow missed, which has almost entirely excellent reviews on Amazon.]


The view.


At the top. It looks a bit like Kenya, except for the part where I am bundled up.


Perhaps one of the best parts of the hike was the fact that the way down was so steep that we had to sled. On our butts, without any sleds, and without any snow. This video, which can also be found on my facebook, shows the fearless Maia leading the way down the hill. Thanks to the extra rain pants she lent me (visible in photo above) I was able to get down the hill the same way with only a minimal amount of wet-butt-ness.