Mountain Valley In Argyll

When we left Glencoe and began the long drive to Glasgow, we drove through the Highlands of Argyll for miles seeing almost no other people and not a single human habitation. The landscape of the Scottish Highlands is one of the least populated in Europe, rivaling the mountainous sub-Arctic north of Scandinavia. It looked to us like nothing so much as the arid sprawl of the American Southwest, miraculously coated with a vast green carpet. When we parked to rest, my wife would play her CD of the Celtic band "Tribal Vortex" while I took photographs. I climbed a hill immediately to the left of the scene below, reaching a height of a few hundred feet before turning back. A hundred yards above me, I could see a waterfall in a misty rift just beneath the summit. As I turned to go back, I stepped aside to let another tourist - a young Japanese woman - pass by me. I envied her resolve to reach the top.