THE RIVER

If out hiking in the highlands of Scotland, you may find yourself cut off by a river which you weren’t expecting. You look at your map, and are sure you know where you are, but can’t see any river marked. You look back up, and there it is for sure, broad and slow-moving. If it wasn’t so wide, you might think that it was just a stream in spate, or one of those rivers that only appears after heavy rain, and then disappears again.

You take your boots and socks off and try wading across, but after just a few steps you back off. The riverbed seemed to shelve quick and deep, and although slow moving the current was strong, wanting to push you off your feet.
You curse and move on, walking downstream hoping for a bridge, or somewhere the water narrows and there are stepping stones, but don’t find any, just the river, wide and slow. You must have looked at your map a dozen times, but the river is never there, and yet…it is there.

A little further on you come to what once was a tiny village, two or three cottages and a few outbuildings, crumbling roofs and empty buildings, but as you walk through it you realise it’s not entirely empty. Just past the last cottage, a man sits on a stone at the bank of the river, smoking a pipe. More importantly, he sits next to a small rowing boat moored with a rope tied around the base of the stone.

Hello you say, and he takes another puff of his pipe, looking out at the river, and the smell reminds you of your grandfather and warm rooms and love. Then he turns to look at you, and you feel…seen. He gives a nod.

“I’m trying to get that way,” you say, and point across the river. “But there’s…the river.” You feel stupid, obvious. He just looks at you. “And I couldn’t find it on the map, I don’t know what’s…why…”
“Do you want to cross?” he says.
“Oh, that would be - yes, please,” you say.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I need - there’s a bothy another 12 miles or so that way.”
“Are you sure? That you want to cross? And not turn back?”
You pause for a moment, but then say yes.

He rows you across in silence, refuses any payment, and when you get to the other side you thank him, but he’s already rowing back. The rising hills hide the river from you, and you arrive at the bothy footsore and tired, sleep well, and enjoy the rest of your holiday.

When you get home though, to friends and family, you know, you know in your heart, that although they look the same and sound the same they are not the people you left. No one that you know is the person that you knew before you went on your holiday. You cannot say anything to anyone, because they will call you mad, and you cannot prove how, but no one is the same as they were before you crossed the river.