Hi everyone,
I feel like an extended paean to Edinburgh is an appropriate way to return to the blog after an extended absence. Yes, that absence did include a vacation, which I will also be telling you about eventually, but seriously, how do I begin to describe this city I'm living in right now?
I made the right choice in waiting until spring to post pictures ('cuz it was totally my plan all along...), because Edinburgh...Edinburgh in blossom has to be one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. Every street corner has a flower bed just exploding with the entire rainbow of colors, and all the trees are covered in white and pink blossoms. The Royal Mile side of Prince's Street Gardens (a public park in the valley between the two "halves" of the city) is a steep slope sweeping up to Edinburgh castle at the top, and it's currently covered in a carpet of daffodils. And all of this lush, vibrant color set against the backdrop of the castle, always cool-looking stone and dark shadows...it's beautiful. I love the fact that there's a real spring here--trees and flowers blooming for weeks at a time in cool weather, rather than what we have at home, which is really more of a pounce than a spring. But the light is already the same as it would be in the middle of summer at home--the sun sets at around 8:30, and by real summer it will stay out until around 10:30.
That's something I've been thinking about a lot while watching the change of seasons here. Light. You all remember how I griped and moaned about the dark during the winter, and now that there has been a total reversal, I'm more aware of the glory of light itself, the richness, the subtle hues that sunlight at different times and qualities casts on what it touches, than I ever have been before. At home we're used to long summer days, but I've never really enjoyed them this way before--how the sun seems to hang halfway up the sky for hours and hours. All afternoon the light is broad, the rays warm, the shadows long, but it lingers. It feels almost endless. That's the real contrast between the seasons in Scotland, not hot and cold, but light and dark. And the poignancy of the contrast almost makes the dark worth it.
(Almost.)
And Edinburgh! The title of this post is a quote from GK Chesterton about the city, which really is built on one tall crag in particular and its hilly surroundings. Everywhere you go, you're climbing, either a steep, sloping road or a staircase or something. It took me a while to figure out what it is I like so much about the narrow exterior staircases, the little "closes" that lead between buildings to old courtyards set back from the road or just down to another street. I like them because they give the whole city this feeling of being a human habitation. It's not just the buildings that were built for people, with roads to get from one to another and maybe some little gaps left between them. The gaps are staircases, passages, made for people to use, not just left in the cracks between the structures people use. They give the stone and brick a sense of being a life-filled place.
It has such character, and such characters. Street musicians who shift from acoustic to smooth jazz as the sun goes down (and that one guy who plays the drums in a gorilla suit, but I'm not exactly sure how to classify him). Awesome Canadian girls who will start a roster for the Order of the Phoenix with me on the wall of the Elephant House bathroom (we now have 16 members). In a few weeks, I'll be moving back to St. Andrews, and I'm looking forward to being "at home" among my friends there, but I am really going to miss Edinburgh.
It's an enchanting place. And Facebook finally decided to finish downloading my pictures, so I can even show it to you.
Edinburgh in Blossom
