Tribal

      "Fancy meeting you out here in the forest," I gasp to the stylish woman stopped at the wheel of a green Lotus Seven with the top down. "Going my way, old man?" she teases, flashing that brilliant smile I'd seen once before when proffering my umbrella.      The half hour squatting under a basalt overhang after the white horse spooked in the driving rain had given me plenty of time to contemplate my predicament. Following the old nag back to retrieve my backpack would place me once again in the hands of the traitorous Rolland Beattison and his White Esk clan, and my Danner boots and the promise of U.S. dollars were all I had left to trade for a ride to Glasgow. There was still no phone service on the Black Esk side of the ridge, and the battery was down to 10% and counting. Luckily, I'd stuck my passport, credit card, and Covid verification in a pocket of my zip-offs that morning.      I emerged from my cave into an evening sun peaking th...

      "Easy Betty Baty," I croon to the old mare tossing her head as a bevy of big black birds flies up from a grove of slender birches on the western slope behind the ancient hill-fort, their silvery serrated leaves fluttering upward with the flock. "Snort," she blows, reluctantly obeying the reigns urging her up into the mist of a low cloud hanging at the ridge top.      Though Rolland Beattison's white nag didn't want to go that way, it was a good thing she knew the trail. It was midday and might as well have been midnight for the lack of visibility from dark clouds massed over the divide between White and Black Esk waters. The clamour of rooks might have been enough to turn my superstitious ancestors back, but not me. This might be the only chance to see where my paternal line originated in tribal Europe.      As to who those ancestors were - Britons, Picts, Angles, Gaels, or Norse - it's a good bet they had some of each from the successi...

      "Twas Bauldy Beattie and me white Beattisons down to Langholm," begins the wobbly linkster when I tell him where I'm heading.  "Then that's where I need to be before the end of the day," I enthuse, pulling out my cellphone and hitting the on button. "Yer people over to Score be long gone, hung or worse by Scottish Jimmy," he continues, filling my water bottle from a stone culvert spouting a steady stream from a crack in the basalt outcropping beside his low stone house. "Still no cell service for me to get a Lyft," I complain into the now darkening mid-morning sky after checking my phone and finding no signal. "How far is this place?" "Tis a fur piece round to the Black Esk, but nary a short run thar a' mhonaidh for me nag."      So it was either continue on my perilous footpath to Langholm or trust the goodwill of a cantankerous distant cousin from the wrong side of the family. If being outed by a monk, chas...

      "Trespassing Americans," grumbles an old man striding toward me in the grey pre-dawn and clasping a golf club over his right shoulder. "Hold on Mr. Beattison," I bargain, recognizing the old minstrel from the Eskdalemuir inn. "I'm a Bateson." "Fore!" he screams, swinging the antique wooden driver.      I'd stumbled down the hill after the beast fell for my decoy and tore up the burgundy sash. There was a streak of silver on the eastern horizon as I halted at the Esk, and suddenly I knew it was no bad trip I'd been on. Instead, I'd slept off the mushrooms all afternoon and evening and was now greeting the dawn of my last full day in Scotland.      Scoping out the shallows in the thin light, I had waded across with growing thirst, resisting the temptation to slurp from the pastoral waters probably teeming with E. coli  or worse. I was heading back to the B709 to continue on to Langholm when spotted by Rolland Beattison.   ...

    "A wee pee for Mr. Peewee?" I laugh to myself from the top edge of what looks like, in the waning quarter moonlight, a large oval mound. "Chuffle," is the snorting answer I get from across the plateau behind me.      I'd followed the glittering trail across the B709 and over a pasture to a steep rise, arriving at the top after slogging up a barely discernible switchback path.       Suddenly famished, I sat on the southeastern edge of the mound and polished off the cranachan the barkeep had pushed into a pocket of my pack during my hasty exit from Eskdalemuir. The perfect mix of crunchy oatmeal, tart strawberries, and rich cream was just the thing, but it also triggered my gastrocolic reflex.       I'd stood and whipped it out in hopes that a good urination would relieve the urge to shit on the open top of the exposed hill.       Startled by the guttural response to my rhetorical pun, I spun around t...

      "Two should be direach mu dheis for a first trip," my self-appointed spirit guide explains, handing me a couple of spindly dried mushrooms. "What do I do with them?" I ponder, sniffing their sweet earthy scent. "Eat them, ye numpty-noo," he scoffs, stuffing a handful in his mouth.  "You'll be alright with that many?"  "Ye Americans are so unco guid." "Just naive," I grumble, trying not to react to his tone despite having no idea what I'm being accused of.  "Greasaibh oirbh!" he commands, scooting back around to the sunny side of the obelisk. "Solstice noon only comes once a year."       I sat there leaning against the cool stone and staring at the slender mushrooms in my palm. My mind was still boiling from the chase along the White Esk after a mid-morning whisky and beer. I was well into the second day of my genealogical excursion and only inching toward the Langholm churchyard cemetery I...

      "What ye upty, Da?" makes me jump, seemingly spoken by the boulder I've just leaned back into.  "Hell," I gasp as a dreadlocked young man peeks around the rock. "Looking...for an old guy...in a golf outfit." "Steamin and scuddered, are ye?" he laughs, scooting around to sit beside me on the shady side of the stone. "English please?" "A little early in the day to be drunk and tired, hey mate?" "Just ran a mile," I explain, pulling the stolen burgundy sash from the pack strap and wiping my sweaty forehead and neck.      I'd made it to the pub door in time to see the minstrel peddling south on a rusty English Racer. Scrambling into shoulder straps, I took off in the best trot I could muster with forty pounds jostling on my back, but soon lost sight of the old bugger.       Slowing to a fast walk bought me the brain space to ponder my predicament. I had no idea what Wut-Carrick was and no plan for when I go...

     "Whew, that was some hike," I huff, dropping my pack by the door of the first place I come to after a two-mile trek into Eskdalemuir. "Opening at ten mate," calls the barkeep, a portly balding fellow carrying a tray of clean thistle glasses from the kitchen at the Old School Cafe. "But ya look like yer could use a pick-me-up." "Only if it's no trouble," I bargain, bellying up to the bar. "What's your local Scotch?" "No such thing lad, but if it's a malt you want, that be The Borders."  "Then make it a boilermaker with thisReiver Red," I nod toward the labeled tap.      My escape from Samye Ling was in a nick of time. As my goddess nun made a beeline for the front door to consult with the agitated monk, I beat a hasty retreat out a side exit and ran for the guesthouse, stuffing toiletries bag and raincoat into an already overloaded backpack.       I was hoisting it on and about to exit the compound wh...