Scrambling

I first heard the noun scramble—defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “a mountain walk up steep terrain involving the use of one’s hands”—when I was 18, bumming around bonnie Scotland. Bonnie Scotland? More like wet, windy, tent-thrashing, ambition-smashing Scotland. My traveling buddy, a mostly inscrutable, mostly inebriated Glaswegian who cared naught for dental hygiene and knew naught of mortal fear, had initiated a rest break (read: smoke break) during our approach to the Black Cuillin’s Pinnacle Ridge. Features with fierce names like Sgurr nan Gillean and Basteir Tooth loomed overhead—a traverse far riskier than anything I’d attempted back home. Born and raised in Vermont, I was a bushwhacker accustomed to dirt and ferns, not alpine gabbro.

“Oh, come now, it’s only a wee scramble,” the Glaswegian said between puffs on an immense unfiltered rollie.

Scram what? Only a wee? Had this bloke been nipping mini-bottles of Glenfiddich since breakfast?

“A wee scramble,” he said. “You’ll be fine.”

An hour later I was, in fact, not fine. I was marooned