Facing East From Edinburgh Castle

The hillside below is so rumpled and green that it is hard to believe that this photograph was taken at the very heart of Edinburgh. Just after the noon gun was fired on Castle Hill, I turned east to take in the view and this is what I saw. The clouds are squatting, full of more rain. The spire of an old church (now a nightclub) pierces the horizon on the right. The rest of the city spans out on a diagonal to the left, like some bend sinister of urban sprawl. This is another example of the many contradictions of Edinburgh. There is crowding, there are buildings packed together, and perched on top of one another. At the same time there are grass-swaddled hills and craggy promontories worked into the fabric of the city in a way that its ancient citizens probably took for granted, but which we moderns might see as a flagrant waste of civic space just begging for an office park or a subdivision. Let us pray that this city always stays so "primitive".