Who indeed that has once seen Edinburgh, but must needs see it again in dreams waking or sleeping.
—Charlotte Brontë
Edinburgh reads like a book. Your first look at the city is like an exposition: hazy Georgian architecture that emerges from a sleepy fog. When you step onto the Royal Mile, it is like an inciting incident: you have stumbled suddenly before row upon row of sleeping giants—towering shopfronts and medieval turrets, sandstone walls tinged black by smoke. It is not unlikely to encounter plot twists: gothic churches or German-style cottages on the corners of the cobbled, uneven streets. Edinburgh is built on top of itself—like flood layers in a canyon, each level is a different page in the city’s rich history.
The climax of the narrative occurs in Holyrood Park. At once the winding dreariness of Victoria Street and the regal pomp of High Street dissolve into a flat expanse of sweetgrass. At the back of the park, the low landscape swoops upward into an imposing peak, jutting over the napping city like a night watchman: Arthur’s Seat.
I have been awake for 36 hours. My tour guide says our study group will hike Arthur’s Seat before we go to sleep, and I look at him like he’s committed a murder in front of me. But I have come to Edinburgh to learn about the Scottish culture, so I cross the street to the foot of the peak.
There is no guard, no gate, no charge to get in. I mention to my traveling companions that I am surprised.
Well, says our guide, of course the hike is free. Arthur’s Seat has been in Scotland longer than Edinburgh has been established. The people are proud. Their landscape, with its drastic escarpments and plunging valleys, is a treasure that they want to share with anyone who will respect it.
I quickly learn respect for the land. The climb up Arthur’s Seat is difficult, even for the most experienced hiker. No guardrails exist—no stairs, no marked path, no ropes for the steepest inclines, so steep that they are nearly vertical. Our roadblocks are not boulders or fallen trees, but the groundcover: dust and small pebbles. One wrong step could send a climber hurtling back to the foot of the hill.
It is impossible not to stumble. Even more precarious, surrounding us on our hike is the pine-green, thistled plant that our tour guide calls gorse. Between the spines, small yellow flowers sprout which smell like coconut. Gorse grows in coarse, thorny sheets, dominating the hills and outcrops of Arthur’s Seat. It also blooms across Britain, our tour guide tells us, but in Scotland, it is thicker, coarser, and most stubborn. Burn it to the ground, and it will grow back. Shepherds use it as a natural fold for their flocks.
In many ways, gorse is an analogy for the Scottish people. No matter how hard the British tried to eliminate them or subdue them, they maintained their resolve, and they always came back from the brink of destruction. I am beginning to understand why the Scottish are so proud of their heritage.
The denouement of my first day in Edinburgh happens when I reach the summit of Arthur’s Seat. I’m sweaty, and my shirt is plastered with red dust, but I’m smiling. Behind me, the city of Edinburgh sprawls beneath a coverlet of fog. It looks so much smaller than I imagined. I know that in a few hours I will climb down Arthur’s Seat and find myself lost in the labyrinth of streets and alleyways, and Edinburgh will become large again. But just for a moment, I stop, and I stare at the outstretched cityscape, and I cradle Edinburgh in the palms of my hands.