Despite our train’s impending departure, LaMarcus Ford II, ’14 and Biology major, and I ran downhill, dodging (and sometimes failing to dodge) innocent pedestrians. We stumbled into the fudge shop by the water, ordering quickly and sprinting the way we came. At the station, we sunk into our seats and sucked on the peppermint-chocolate cubes as we waved goodbye to Windermere in a state of exhaustion and awe and heavy-breathing. Earlier, we ate lunch on a dock that was yellow and deserted. My legs hung in the water as I unwrapped my sandwich and enjoyed the fall trees on the opposite bank. They looked like autumn cotton candy. Hiking by Lake Windermere’s edge, I stepped into a huge brown puddle. The entire walk, my wellies sunk into mud way deeper than it looked, and remnants still line the sides of my boots. A grove of trees opened to the water’s bank, and we rested on a gigantic rock that hung over the beach. In a gust of wind, a million leaves fell from the trees above us, and I felt, for a moment, as if I were in some live-action snow globe, because they were so perfectly dispersed and fell so beautifully on the surface. Further uphill, LM and I found an estate open to the public that had a life-size chessboard in its garden. We played a (long) game, which he won. As usual. As we played, the super-blue lake and the ivy-covered mansion peeked out behind him. Since Mr. Darcy’s Pemberley Estate was set there, I half imagined I was visiting his grounds like Lizzy had. By the estate, we found a graveyard. Despite its older tenants, Edinburgh’s tombstones have been generally much better kept; the 1606 man buried in Greyfriars has a beautifully manicured slab while this little neighborhood only died circa 1900. Its graves were decrepit and mossy and somehow beautiful in the direct sunlight. We found a waterfall and I hopped inside. We inched toward sheep and horses, baa-ing and nay-ing, only to terrify them and send them running. Climbing a hill, however, we did find one friendly donkey. Upon reaching the top of the hill, I hopped its stone wall and ran through the sheep field and jumped up and down on its highest slope like some annoying little kid because its views were so beautiful and I knew no picture could capture them but I couldn’t stop trying. We spoke to a Scottish man who asked where we were from. He told us he’d been to Seattle before asking if it was “the place where they have that market where they throw those fish.” And before all of this began, in the morning, we watched a rainbow form over a rolling sheep pasture. It appeared suddenly, surprising me (LM remained unaffected,) and it arched across the entire sky as if to warn us that the Lake District would be perfect.
(It was.)
