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I couldn’t take offense at his good-natured laughter. The Gaelic sounded so awful coming from me, it probably insulted his Scottish pride.
“Close.”
We tried a few more times, with him patiently pronouncing the name of the hill we stood atop, and me butchering it in echo.
“You’re trying anyway, which is more than most Americans do.”
“Are we the worst?” I asked. “I always hear that we are, so it won’t hurt my feelings if you say it’s true.”
I’d read several articles detailing what American tourists shouldn’t do overseas. Most of it boiled down to not being a jerk.
Arnav laughed again. “Americans aren’t bad, really, they just tend not to want out of their comfort zone, they call it. They speak a certain way, eat certain food, have certain entertainment, and they want to speak, eat, and do the same things everywhere they go. Anything else is strange to them.”
“Is it weird to do the same things all the time?”Asking for a friend.
He grinned. “Never hurts to try something new.”
“I’ll try not to be a rude American, at least.” No guarantees on thesomething newpart. Especially when it came to things like haggis and blood pudding.
“The worst offense Americans make,” Duncan said with a dramatic pause, “is to accuse a Scot of being English.”
Bea and Rupert looked away, suddenly very interested in the views.
Arnav shook his head over the insult. “Or the Irish of being English.”
“Or the Welsh.”
“Pretty bad, is it?” I asked. I wouldn’t be able to tell one nationality from another based on accents alone.
“Safest to assume anyone you meet in this country is Scottish.” Duncan winked, but I was pretty sure he meant every word. “We’re old enemies, you know.”
“But I thought you were aUnitedKingdom.” I brought my hands together and laced my fingers to demonstrate.
His deep laughter raised the temperature on the mountainside by a couple of degrees. In my immediate vicinity, at least.
“Bit of a myth.”
“So I shouldn’t say this is the loveliest mountain in England?”
He pulled his mouth into a dour frown. “No.”
“Or that you have quite a nice accent for an Englishman?”
“Don’t.” The crinkling around his eyes betrayed his amusement, ruining the glower.
I shrugged in playful innocence. “It’s all British to me.”
“You’re not wrong there,” Rupert called out. “We are theBritishCommonwealth.”
The other men looked unmoved by his helpful emphasis.
The descending trail from Meall a’ Bhuachaille wasn’t nearly as rough as the climb up. A long stretch down faced a lake Lewis identified as Loch Morlich. The lake proved extremely photogenic and had the added benefit of being easier to pronounce than Meall a’ Bhuachaille.
I’d never seen views so stunning in all my life and continued to snap away at every turn. Maybe views were like accents, and I had only grown used to the beauty of Seattle because I saw it every day. If I brought Duncan to Seattle, he would probably stare in amazement at Mount Rainier and the shining Puget Sound, sights I took for granted. Would coming home to them after being away change how I saw them? Or would I go back to not really seeing them at all?
I couldn’t imagine ever getting used to the views here.
Each bend in the trail or drop in elevation gave a new vantage I wanted to preserve with a picture, and I stopped every thirty feet or so. I didn’t want one piece of this trip to slip through my fingers. I would be back in my office soon enough—I needed to cherish every minute.
