I woke up with a start in the middle of the night. The room was pitch black and I needed a moment to remember exactly where I was. …Scotland, Isle of Skye, the Portree hostel… As it came to me I racked my brain for what it was that had pulled me out of my deep sleep. It had been a loud sound, like the guttural groan of an old chainsaw trying to fire up. But the room was still and I was convinced that it must have been something from a now forgotten dream. Then all of a sudden I heard it again, there, inside the room! The sound pulsed with a nightmarish crescendo until I finally realized what it was. It was somebody snoring, but not in any way I had ever heard before.

Snores

Like the sputtering of a malfunctioning lawnmower, the snores were now syncopating throughout the room. My surely bloodshot eyes were wide open, staring at the bunk bed mattress above me and wondering if I was the only one who was hearing this. There would be no more sleep for me if this unbearable noise continued—not a chance. As my sight adjusted to the darkness, I tried to pinpoint the snorer. It was one of my American travel companions, who I will kindly leave nameless here, in a bottom bunk diagonally across from mine. Travel companionship be damned, this snoring was an act of war that demanded retaliation.

I felt around for a weapon of some sort, envisioning a long stick for jabbing, or a projectile in the form of a muddy boot perhaps. My hand brushed the towel I had hung up to dry from the bedside and an idea took hold. Ever so quietly, I pulled down the damp towel and began to twist it into a whip. I leaned out of the bed with my weapon in hand, and after a moment’s deliberation, sent one end of the towel flying out toward the snorer with the flick of a wrist. There was a sharp pop as the towel snapped against empty air, and I held my breath and waited to see if the snores would cease. They didn’t. I rolled the towel up again, a frighteningly malevolent determination taking me over as I did. I leaned out farther this time and cracked the towel, not once, but twice into the back of the snoring menace. I quickly retracted the towel and lay still as a corpse as the snorer woke up with a gurgling yelp. From somewhere in the top bunks came the sound of stifled laughter followed by a collective sigh of relief. With the demon successfully exorcised, the room was bathed in a most beautiful silence. A little smile formed on my face and I drifted happily back to sleep until morning.

It was pouring rain the next day. A shame because there had been promising talk of doing the hike to the Fairy Pools, colloquially called the Scottish Fountain of Youth. When 10am rolled around and a decision needed to be made between paying for another night or checking out, we went with the latter and braved the rain. Jack, David, Chelsea and I once again loaded into the tiny Fiat 500 with all of our gear and set off on the mountain road. The South American coffee one of the other hostel guests had graciously shared with me that morning was vigorously coursing through my veins. I was so excited about the impending adventure that I whooped and cheered every time we took a hard corner or drove through a big puddle. We came to the small dirt lot we had seen the night before, where we had met the Australian couple camping in their VW bus, and parked the Fiat there. The VW bus was gone, but there was a Honda hatchback in its place. As our crew unloaded and geared up for the torrential downpour, another car pulled into the lot and parked next to us. It was an English couple with a baby, also looking to do the hike to the Fairy Pools. The baby, who couldn’t have been more than two, was loaded into a massive child carrier backpack with a large plastic visor scooped overhead to protect him from the wet. I wondered if they were planning to dip him into the magic pools like Achilles to immortalize him. We wished them luck as we walked by to the trailhead, the baby’s head bobbing sleepily inside the carrier pack as the man turned to wave at us.

The trail wound steeply down from the road, a slippery slope of mud and rocks that leveled out on the valley floor next to a wide gushing stream. The landscape was sprawling and treeless, the golden grasslands before us stretching out to the base of misty black mountains in the distance. Jack and David took point with Chelsea close behind and me bringing up the rear. Almost immediately, I felt the familiar twinge of an impending shin splint shoot through my leg and tried my best to ignore it. I was beginning to suspect that my boots were the culprit, being that they felt a size too small for me at this point. I consciously tried to stop myself from limping, but it became more and more pronounced as we hiked along. When the group noticed me falling behind, with a laugh I assured them that I was fine. On a scale from one to ten, my leg was hovering around a manageable four and a half. I pushed the pain from my mind, focusing instead on the soothing sounds of rain and running water.

Less than half a mile into the hike, the trail curved left and stopped at the edge of an overflowing ravine. What normally would have been a little hop and a skip of a stream crossing was now a treacherous river. The rain was still coming down in earnest and I imagine that we were witnessing flash flooding in action. As the four of us fanned out from the trail in search of an alternate crossing point, the English couple with their child caught up to us and contemplated the water. As I was testing my weight on various rocks jutting out of the water downstream from the couple, I saw them arguing heatedly and gesturing to where the trail picked up on the other side. I couldn’t hear what they were saying over the rain and whitewater, but it was easy to imagine that the debate revolved around the mortality of the child in the backpack carrier. 

David called out from that he had found a place to cross where the far side could be reached with a well-executed jump. Leading by example, David leapt with a monstrous bound that sent his soaking black hair streaming out behind him. He landed safely on the other side. My shin splint pain momentarily forgotten, I followed him. Chelsea needed some extra encouragement, but was persuaded to take the leap of faith. She tossed her bag first, and then backed up for a running start. She hurtled over the water with Olympian form and landed in my outstretched arms. The two of us tipped precariously toward the water and I felt David’s hairy forearms lock around my waist and hers as he heroically pulled us away from the river and into a mud puddle. Jack, looking particularly skeptical about the whole situation, jumped last and landed short with a splash and a “Goddammit!” in ankle deep water. “How come no one tried to catch me?” he asked, throwing his arms up in the air and marching huffily out of the water. David started to respond with what I’m sure would have been a very droll retort, but Jack cut him off with a stern “Oh no, shut up you,” and took the lead back to the trail. I glanced back at the English couple still bickering on the other side of the river and waved encouragingly. For their kid’s sake, I hoped that they would decide to turn back.
The trail began to climb, taking us by some incredible rock formations. To our right, the gushing ravine widened and deepened into a rocky channel, but there was no sign of any swimmable pools (or fairies) yet. We pressed on, my leg still a throbbing nuisance, following the winding trail over slippery rocks, muddy puddles, and matted meadows. The rain continued to come down relentlessly. The pitter-patter on my nylon jacket escalated to a deafening roar, eventually reaching the decibel level of  machinegun chatter. The dark clouds overhead offered one last surge of soaking rain, temporarily obscuring my vision as the volume of falling water grew so impossibly dense that it seemed as if an entire ocean was upending itself over our heads. Unable to see a thing, I stopped under the crushing downpour and tried in vain to shout out to the others. But I could barely even hear myself over the monsoon. Then, as quickly as it had started, the rain stopped. I wrung out my hat, which was soaked despite having been under my nylon hood. Once again able to see clearly, I was surprised to find the others only a few feet ahead of me; Jack, wringing out his floppy brimmed hat, Chelsea, rolling up her muddied pant legs, and David, vigorously whipping his mane of hair about like a wet dog.

The dark clouds drifted away, bathing the valley in an ethereal glow of misty mid-morning sunlight. We rounded a corner and were met with a spectacular view of cascading waterfalls pouring into the rocky channel beneath us. We debated amongst ourselves whether these could be the Fairy Pools we were searching for, but eventually decided that they weren’t because of the rapid current. From pictures we had researched the night before, the Fairy Pools were meant to be serene and safely swimmable, unlike the dangerously swift waters we saw now. As my companions took the opportunity to photograph the scenery, I spied a scraggly, leafless tree nearby that looked to be perfect walking-stick material. It was clearly not long for this world, judging by it’s awkwardly droopy stature, and it only took a couple of good tugs to free the flimsy roots from their muddy purchase. I quickly trimmed it with my pocketknife and then graciously transferred weight from my aching leg into the springy stick. It may not have been perfect, but it worked well enough. After taking some photos of my own, I fell back in line as the group continued along the trail.

We soon came to another water crossing, which, while not as deep or swift as the first one, was considerably wider in breadth. David and I crossed the water at different spots this time. While he again took the bounding approach, I took a more circumspect route along a complicated series of rocks, made considerably simpler by my beloved new walking stick. Chelsea and Jack remained on the other side, wary of both approaches. I encouragingly offered my walking stick to Chelsea, but it bounced out of her hands when I tossed it over the water and floated despairingly downstream and over a waterfall. I watched it go with a heavy heart. Unbelievably, the English couple and their backpack baby came striding around the bend behind Jack and Chelsea, soaked to the bone and clearly disappointed to find yet another water crossing. It was then that David and I devised a plan for getting everyone across. We would throw a series of large stones into the water, effectively creating a small footbridge that could be traversed. We scoured the area for large stones, using our grubby fingernails to dig veritable boulders out of the ground before heaving them into the river. None of this was doing my throbbing leg any favors, but the sense of purpose and adventure pushed the pain to the back of my mind. After nearly twenty minutes of herculean effort, we bridged the gap between our fellow hikers and us. Chelsea, Jack, and the toddler-toting English couple crossed without a hitch.

We continued on as the English family stopped for a lunch break. I think we were all quite envious of them for having the foresight to bring a snack along for the hike. There were a few more waterfalls to be seen as we hiked deeper into the valley, but eventually, the intimidating river began to devolve into a series of rocky streams. We hiked and we hiked, the terrain becoming gradually swampier as we went. We were beginning to feel a bit lost. Where were these Fairy Pools? Had we come too far? Wanting to consult the almighty Google for answers, Chelsea and I hung back to see if my phone could pick up any signal. I waved the phone in every direction hoping for half a bar of signal, but to no avail. Chelsea wisely recommended getting to higher ground, so I clambered up a hillside and scrambled—quite ungracefully—on top of a large boulder. I held the phone over my head like a lightening rod and bellowed to the heavens, “GOD, GRANT ME SIGNAL!” To my amazement, my phone was bestowed with immaculate reception. I did a quick search and read that to get to the main Fairy Pool, hikers needed to take a left at a fork found early in the hike. I returned to ground level and conveyed the message from the Internet Gods to Chelsea, who like me, couldn’t recall seeing any fork in the trail.

Chelsea showed noticeable concern in my pained limp as we hurried to catch up to Jack and David, but I assured her that it was nothing life threatening. I was reassuring myself as much as I was her with those words. The pain had escalated to a solid six on the scale. We caught up to Jack, who was holding David’s soaked leather jacket in a clenched fist. He looked annoyed. Apparently David had left it by the stream and gone gallivanting up ahead for signs of the pools. The three of us took a well-deserved break as we waited for him to return with news. When David finally reappeared—wearing only shorts and a black bowling shirt that showed an unsightly amount of bushy chest hair—he proposed that we all hike to the source of the stream midway up a nearby mountain to see if we could spot the pools from a higher vantage point. It seemed as good a plan as any, despite it unwisely requiring us to leave the trail completely and traverse a perilous mile of swampy marshland. Jack voiced his concerns with the foolhardy plan, and though democratically outvoted, continued to complain about the idiotic mission all the way to the mountain.

The topography of our trailblazing new route was refreshingly flat, but the reprieve was short-lived as swampy footing soon threatened to suck our boots off with every step. It wasn’t long at all before the inside of my boots felt just as soaked as the outside. Still, in spite of my increasing discomfort, I continued to admire the sheer awesomeness of my surroundings. Peter Jackson himself had filmed quite a bit of Scottish highland scenery for use in his films, and in an attempt to lighten the mood on our Tolkien-worthy quest to the misty mountain, I played the Lord of the Rings soundtrack over my phone. Though the phone speakers were feeble, the effect was epic. The emboldening sounds of brass battle trills and anvil hammering percussion lifted our spirits as we splashed and squelched our way across the marsh. I expected sword-wielding orcs to come clawing their way out of the swamp at any moment, a comical thought that led me to seriously wonder about the possibility of alligators in Scotland. As we drew closer to the foot of the mountain, the footing mercifully became more solid and my unvoiced fears of large toothy reptiles subsided. 

Jack had fallen a considerable distance behind, audibly cursing every soggy step as he trudged onward. David lingered at the bottom of the incline for him to arrive while Chelsea and I took the lead. The two of us determinedly crawled up the steep rise of loose rock toward a wide crack in the mountain where the stream we’d been following seemed to flow from. As rocks shifted and tumbled away underfoot, I noticed quite a few bleach white bones peeking out from between the stones. The bones had all been picked clean, and I was hoping that they were the remains of some far straying sheep and not trail abandoning hikers like us.
Huffing and puffing, Chelsea and I finally reached the crevice in the mountain where a cave led to a small waterfall magically trickling out of what appeared to be solid rock. Together we walked into the heart of the mountain and let the cool water fill our outstretched hands. Turning around, we gazed out and soaked in the magnificent panorama of the valley we had just hiked across. From the high elevation, the flooded stream was but a silver thread weaving its way through the sprawling grassland. Everything shimmered with a proud green hue after the heavy rain, and the dark storm clouds had completely subsided to reveal a blue afternoon sky streaked with blushes of red and pink.

So entranced by the view, I was surprised to realize that Chelsea and I were holding hands. We must have done so unconsciously, and I welcomed the warmth of her hand in mine. I let my gaze drift from the valley vista to her soft features and considered her for a moment. It was a rare kind of girl who would trek through torrential rain, muddy marshland, and up a mountain on little more than a whim. Indeed, it took an impressive bit of nerve and spirit for such a beautiful girl to travel solo in the highlands and hold her own amidst such decidedly profane male company. I was suddenly smitten. And in that perfect moment, David clambered into the cave and unceremoniously blurted, “Fuck me, please tell me one of you packed a beer!”

The combination of his poor timing with our famished exhaustion had us laughing uncontrollably for a spell. David showed little interest in whether we were laughing with him or at him and brushed by to inspect the waterfall. He stuck his entire face under it and drank with gurgling gluttony. Chelsea and I perched ourselves at the mouth of the entrance, glowing with the excitement of having found something so intangibly rewarding on the mountain. When Jack finally made it up to us, he looked positively devastated about the lack of a bar and buffet inside the cave. The four of us came to together to scan the valley for signs of the Fairy Pools, tracing the spidery tangents of the stream with our fingers as we tried to get our bearings. We could just make out where we had left the trail across the marsh, but it soon wound its way through rocky terrain and became almost impossible to see beyond that. But we knew the trail ran alongside the water, and here and there we could spot the silhouettes of hikers where the trail picked up again. In the distance, near where we had started, the stream seemed to widen further up a grassy knoll. There was no telling from this far away if a trail ran parallel, but it was more likely that the pools were near there than anywhere around the marsh we were currently surrounded by. So after hydrating, we stumbled our way back down the mountain, through the swamp, and back toward the trail.

Once again, David took a decidedly more cavalier trajectory and left the rest of us behind. While we had expected to catch up to him, or at the very least, catch a glimpse of him upon reaching the trail, he was nowhere to be found. We were hiking back the same way we had come, but in the time that we had strayed form the trail a lot had changed. The rain-flooded riverbed had calmed considerably and the water crossings were suddenly much more manageable. When we again reached the cascading series of waterfalls where the water had before been a treacherous flume, there were now shallow eddies at the edges of the ravine where the current was gentle and more inviting. It was then that we realized that the Fairy Pools weren’t limited to once specific place—they were everywhere along this trail! All the rain had just flooded them out as we obliviously walked passed.

This epiphany led us to a frightening realization. If David had come to this same conclusion about the pools, he may have decided to take a dip in one on his own. While the water was certainly calmer than it was earlier, the current and array of jagged rocks barely visible under the deep blue water still held murderous potential. In that instant, our hike turned to a decidedly more urgent manhunt. The pace quickened and we were now examining every rocky nook and cranny along the ravine where the current might carry a lifeless body. Jack was furious with David for abandoning the group like this and was aggressively vocal about David’s unending immaturity. But under all the insults and accusations Jack had for David, I only heard a man deeply concerned for the safety of his friend.

We met a few hikers coming from the opposite way and asked them if they had seen a big hairy man on the trail, or perhaps a Bigfoot-looking figure down by the water. None of them had seen anyone coming from our direction, but one Austrian man did recall seeing a rather large naked man easing himself into a deep section of the stream up ahead. There was a moment of panic among us and we quickened our pace even more. As we came to a high crest in the trail Jack suddenly called out with excitement, “I see him!” Way out in the distance and way off trail, there was an apelike figure vaulting over rocks and running through the tall grass with long lumbering, arm-swinging strides. “God, he really does look like Bigfoot,” Jack whispered. “I hope some shotgun-toting Scotsman doesn’t try to shoot him.”

David was cutting a line directly to the section of stream we scouted from the mountain. As eager as we were to see what was there, we didn’t follow in his massive footsteps and instead kept to the trail, which was immensely more enjoyable to walk along now that the rain had stopped. Every now and then we would round a corner and see the blurry outline of David’s sasquatchian form bounding up ahead. It turned into a bit of a game for us to see who could spot him first. Eventually, the American yeti doubled back and Jack flagged him down from atop a tall boulder. He came plodding back to us, thoroughly winded and looking like hell with his pants torn and mud up to his eyebrows. Jack smacked him upside the head and berated him for ditching everyone. “We though you were dead you big idiot!” David took this as an endearing sign of affection and apologized, saying that once he started to run through the rough terrain, he felt so in his element that he just couldn’t stop. He had followed the stream all the way to an impassable cliff, but there were no signs of a swimmable pool. We told him about the Austrian hiker seeing a man swimming along the trail, but David shook his head and said he hadn’t been anywhere near the trail since the mountain. It seemed we weren’t the only crazy people out looking for a swim that day.

We followed the trail all the way back to where we had started, and in the final hundred yards before the hill leading up to the parking lot, we saw a narrow, overgrown path forking to the right. Remembering what I had read earlier in my moment of immaculate reception, I insisted we explore the path. It went only a short way, bending around the slope to reveal a very impressive waterfall—and one very swimmable pool! Looking from the waterfall-fed pool to the distant mountain we had climbed, we all laughed hysterically at our own stupidity. The cyclical nature of the entire hike was a pristine illustration of an adventure being more about the journey than the destination.

The sun had dipped low enough in the sky to be partially obscured by the mountains, and wind whipped frigidly against our sodden clothing. I ran my hand through the water and recoiled at how impossibly cold it felt. Jack and Chelsea had no intentions of swimming, but David and I had been looking forward to the idea all day. We stripped to our boxers and a few onlookers joined our group by the water. David was a grizzly bear of a man, removing his bowling shirt to reveal the impossible amount of scraggly hair underneath—quite the juxtaposition next to my baby-smooth and exceedingly pale self. I made my way to the water with the soaring confidence of someone who had spent a lifetime swimming in Appalachian swimming holes, feeling fully prepared for what I was getting myself into. I barely made it knee deep into the frigid pool when I lost all feeling in my legs. It was as if the blood had frozen in my veins and my body refused to respond to my will. I tried to turn around, to make some signal to the group that I was frozen solid, but all I managed to do was to topple sideways into the water.

Completely submerged in the icy pool, I enjoyed a moment of deep reflection. Time stretched with immeasurable elasticity before ceasing to exist altogether; the faces of friends and family flashed through my mind along with a lifetime of treasured memories. I felt immovably happy. My entire body was numb and I could no longer discern where my skin stopped and the world began. I felt infinite. But slowly, inevitably, the Earth began to spin and the second hand on my watch began to regain consciousness. I came spraying out of the water a second later with so much adrenaline coursing through me that I’m sure electricity crackled from my fingertips. I plunged deeper into the pool, swimming a few strokes with newfound energy to the thunderous base of the waterfall. I held myself under it, absorbing the pressure of the water with enthusiasm. When I finally emerged from the pool, I felt powerful. I was actually probably feeling hypothermic, but for a few amazing seconds, I achieved holy ascension; pure nirvana.

David went splashing into the pool as I came out. Chelsea met me with my shirt and jacket, which I graciously accepted as the nerve endings in my body unthawed and began to transmit the idea of frostbite to my brain. I looked down and saw that my foot was bleeding, probably the result of numbly putting my weight on a sharp rock somewhere. I couldn’t feel any pain though and quickly covered it with my sock and boot for fear of losing it completely to the elements. Once I had both boots tied, I stood up and realized that I had forgotten to put my pants on first. I guess I had traded a bit of common sense for eternal youth in the Fairy Pool. After all the effort it had taken to get my numb fingers to tie the laces, I couldn’t be bothered to undo them for the sake of pants. So once David emerged from the water, looking strikingly like an enraged, caucasian King Kong, we all hiked back to the Fiat together—me without my pants.

Back at the car, we bagged all of our wet hiking clothes and dawned our warmest, driest outfits before piling in together. We cranked up the heat and the music as we drove the scenic route back to Portree. There we tucked into a delicious hot lunch at a bayside cafe where I practically drowned myself in spicy vegetable soup. David and I both ordered large portions of the house specialty—macaroni and cheese with haggis—one of the most amazing things I have ever tasted. With heavy hearts we said goodbye to the Isle of Skye as we drove across the bridge to the mainland and turned north toward Ullapool. What a day it had been…so far.