After Too Long Away

A single thought was ringing though my head with each clunk of the suitcase. I, clunk, my arm jerked, as the left wheel fell into a water filled pothole. Hate, clunk as coffee spluttered from the top of my takeaway coffee mug, Wheelie Bags. Three years in an education abroad office and multiple pack packing expeditions had effectively beat into my head the evils of wheelie bags, but some of life's evils have to be endured. Spilt coffee and a stuttered gate was a small price to pay for this: the familiar smell of humidity and trains and the bright overcast morning outside of Inverness station. We were home.

As I narrowly avoided a puddle, a memory of last night interrupted the mantra. Rachael and I underneath a bridge along the River Ness, practically giddy with our fish supper. The rain poured relentlessly from the sky, but we were too excited to wait until we were back to the hostel. We'd climbed a railing to sit on the embankment and watched as the rain funneled through gutters from the road above. 

A kind woman noticed our struggle and offered to wheel one of our cases the rest of the way into the station. After a coordinated effort we were able to negotiate our two coffees and three wheelie bags through the gates and onto the First Scotrail express service to Glasgow Queen Street. Rachael has hardly been able to take her eyes of the window, a moving panorama of the Scottish Highlands. The greens of the trees and grass are somehow different here. The moss covered grey white rocks, the narrow white water streams, the quaint stone villages, I have to admit it's hard for me to look away too.