Bodkin "Test Drive"
Well, I got the "oak leaf" pin in silver from Crafty Celts, and found it was a bit too long (for me anyway). I cut off nearly an inch, then worked a blunt point on it which I then smoothed off with 600 grit sandpaper. The blunt point pushes aside fibers very nicely without tearing/breaking them, so when you pull the pin out of your plaid it's as though the hole was never there.
I gave the pin a "test drive" in rugged conditions yesterday in the Marin Highlands -- excuse me, HEADLANDS -- just north of the Golden Gate Bridge. As I've mentioned before, it looks like a picture-postcard of some Scottish coastal hill country, and I did something I've fantasized about doing for a couple of years but never quite had the 'nads for. . .
I often go hiking up there in a kilt. But since yesterday was Veterans' Day, I figured the area would not be too clogged with hikers since a lot of people don't have that day off, and I'd have the place largely to myself (I was right).
So I wore the old-style belted plaid (the "Rob Roy" plaid from the Liam Neeson movie), which fit in very well with the autumn vegetation of the hills; handknit bonnet, 17th/18th-century shirt, sporran, dirk, and high-topped cuaran boots. Oh, yes, and the pin.
I got to the Headlands at 3:00 PM and took a route I haven't taken in over a year, breaking off the Miwok Trail to go up to a deer trail along the side of the hill I call Cnoc Sidhe ("Faery Hill", if you prefer), over into the small valley I've named Gleann Tuirc (Valley of the Boar), where wild boar like to lie up among the trees. From there I went up along the ridgeline to the tops of various hills, following deer and boar trails, while deer gazed curiously at me from the valley floor.
Rough going, some of it, but the views were spectacular, with the granite bones of some hills rising like ancient menhirs against the lowering sun. Groups of ravens, children of Morrigan, frolicked in the wind around me, only fifteen feet or so away; and at one point a red-tailed hawk sailed along -- equally close in horizontal distance, but a hundred feet below.
Finally I came to the highest point I'd ever reached before, just as the sun was setting behind the seaward hills to the west. Looking down. . .way down. . .to the north and east I could see the intersection of the Miwok and Wolf Ridge trails, the highest point I usually reached when hiking the "conventional" trails created by the Forest Service.
At that point I also noticed a scent which literally raised my neck-hair, faint at first but growing stronger and pervading the air, making me think at first of a homeless encampment. Then I made the mental connection with the pig droppings and the lying-up places I had seen along the way. . .
Having no great desire to meet An Torc on the mountain with only my dirk, and wondering how I was going to make my way down the treacherous hillside anyway in the gathering gloom, I noticed a comparatively gentle incline below leading to a line of old, decaying fenceposts. It looked like it might go down to, or near, the Wolf Ridge trail, and this proved to be the case.
I was still coming down through the scrub and bracken on the hillside, the evening mist just flowing in from the sea, when two VERY fit and winsome lassies came jogging up the trail below me, breathing hard. The expressions on their faces were indescribable as they looked up to see a vision from three long centuries ago and an island far, far away come striding down toward them from out of the mist; then the astonishment changed to big-**** grins and they waved.
I walked back along the Wolf Ridge trail to the juncture with the Miwok Trail. Just as I reached that point, across a valley to the north, coyotes began to sing -- I counted at least fifteen individual voices. Good spot to rest for a few minutes. . .I took out of my sporran my flask of Hebridean restorative elixir from the Isle of Islay and refreshed myself, as the little hill-wolves sang under a brightening half-moon. Then I sort of floated back down the "official" hiking trail to my car.
I was astonished to realize, since I'd left my watch in the vehicle, that only two and a half hours had passed: It was now 5:30.
But it's two and a half hours that will stay with me for a lang, lang time.
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http://www.swordforum.com/forums/sho...252#post112252)
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