Yesterday, we all marveled at our good fortune. Five days of walking the West Highland Way with absolutely sublime weather – crisp Autumn mornings, cool afternoons, scattered clouds – perfect for hiking.

So, of course, Day 6 would start in a misty drizzle. It stayed like that off and on all day.

“A perfect Scottish morning!” I replied to one hiker’s greeting.

“It wouldn’t be Scotland without rain,” she replied with a laugh.

We pause now for some scientific information about our friend Scotland:

• On average there is measurable rain 280 days a year.
• This area gets 94.5 inches of rain a year (four times that of Edinburgh).
• The mean rainfall is 102.27 inches
• Some of the surrounding regions reported rainfall as much as 200 percent above average.
• October through March are way wetter than September
• Additional facts are unreadable because rain is fogging up my glasses.

So, here’s the thing about today’s hike, the first third was through ancient pine forest with tumbled trees, mossy carpets, trickling burns over which you jump, and raging burns over which wooden bridges are built. The tree stumps and limbs are luminescent with lichen and red mushrooms feast on fallen trees and stumps. Where the light pierces the canopy, stands of ferns and other growth defiantly push upward. Tiny multi-colored flowers and heather line the trail.

What is missing from this picture? The rain. Without it, this might be just another stand of trees. With it, the feeling of life is oozing from every pore and spore, everything in the forest is arching upward to lap up the life-giving rain.

What isn’t coming from above is seeping upward from the already-saturated ground. Puddles and miniature ponds abound where the water has nowhere to go and tiny rivulets course down the hillsides feeding the rivers and burns along the way with fresh force and energy.

It is all so alive, so madly beautifully alive when it rains. Nothing is in remission.

This forest passes on this life to we who walk through it on this day. It’s energy is our energy. As the forest is reborn, so are we.

The rain is what gives it all life.

It is a blessing upon our faces, a rebirth of our souls, an affirmation that Nature has its own priorities.

To be a guest in the forest on a rainy day is a gift indeed.

These images are from the forest walk, the first third of the day’s hike (Click on any picture to expand it.):

When you exit the forest, you truly step into another world. One of devastation. But it is a little more complicated than that. It is the clear-cutting of the forestry industry.

Compared to the benign relationships unfolding in the old forest, the sight acres of old stumps and tree cuttings feels like a bomb went off. When you look closer you see the replantings taking hold.

Also, what looks like devastation is probably erosion control and ground cover for small animals. That’s how I rationalize it.

Pine tree lumbering is a big deal all along the West Highland Way, to this point. That’s all I can say for certainty.

This downward descent through hellscape ends at the old stone viaduct supporting the railroad tracks. Through the archway, across the busy A82, into the north side of the glen and you are into a whole new universe — farmland

We walk across the Mississippi-wide River Fillan filled fat with brown trout, salmon and perch and enter the Fillan flood plain’s green inbye fields as far as you can see, some with sheep, some with cattle. Some fields have already been cut for silage as winter approaches.

Looking benignly over the Glen are the towering gray mountains Ben More (1174 meters), Stob Binnein (1165 meters), and Cruach Ardrain (1046 meters).

A sharp left at the Kirkton Farm house and barns takes you to the moss-covered rurins of the Augustinian priory of St. Fillan, endowed by the warlord Robert the Bruce in 1317. The few walls still standing give no hint of what must have been a magnificent structure in it stime.

Even older is the cemetery across the road, dating back to the 8th century.

We are walking through the heart of the Auchtertyre Farm, with a great view of the grazing sheep and the Tyndrum Hills back on the other side of the glen — Beinn Dubhcraig, Ben Lui, and Beinn Churin. These hills seem magnificent but they are mere shadows of those awaiting us far down the road.

Out the gate of the Auchtertyre Farm, we turn left to follow the River Connish toward Tyndrum.

Back across the highway we enter the Tyndrum Community Woodland, a beautifully curated park with walking/running trails, the surging fishing-rich River Cononish, and the site of the fiercely fought Battle of Dalrigh, which sent Robert the Bruce running for his life. Farther up the trail is a small lake or lochan in which the warlord and his remaining men tossed their swords so they could run faster.

Also part of the park is a curiously barren tract that once was the smelting operation for a lead mining company. The land is forever dead.

A short walk from the park is the town of Tyndrum where I was able to buy three “Men of Scotland in Kilts” calendars for the three women in our hiking party. It is not the same as Brian and I walking the West Highland Way, as once planned, but they will last longer.

Postscript: I think today’s weather is making the many people who bought new rain gear for this hike very happy. Wouldn’t you be if your $180 Gore-tex rain poncho has been bundled tight in your backpack lo these last five blissful days?

I would be.

Ok, enough about the rain. It will likely be with us for the next few days. Or maybe it won’t. It doesn’t matter. Obsessing over it won’t change things.

Tomorrow we have a light day, hiking to Bridge of Orchy where three of us are booked into a still working train station, now called The Bunkhouse.