~ 1 ~

The Scottish Highland Games were gearing up for their opening in a couple of days, and though most of the participants were enjoying the warmish fall air and bright Georgia sunshine,  Scottie MacIncheese was fuming. His cherished bagpipes had been damaged during the trip over from Scotland, and Scottie had no idea how he'd ever get them fixed here. In Edinburgh he'd have nae problem finding the replacement parts, but here!?

"Hey, Mukker!" Scottie heard. He slowly looked up from the bent and broken pipes in his trembling hands to see his young friend, Will McIntosh, ambling toward his perch on the long log where he sat. "Guid mornin'! Hou's aw wi ye?" The smile on Will's face turned to concern when he saw Scottie's pipes.

"Och! Yer pipes are bent, bruised and --"

"Broken," Scottie finished, nodding sadly. "An I dae know if I can fix them afore Friday!"

"Such a problem, aye? An those were your father's pipes, right?" Will asked as he sat next to Scottie.

"Aye, and his father's before him," Scottie continued.

"And his father's before him?" Will pondered.

"His mother's, actually."

"Ah, great-grandmother's old pipes," Will said. "They don't make them like they use to."

"Aye, and there's the problem!" Scottie moaned desperately, his voice choking. "I've got no way tae find parts, no way tae get them even if I could find them, and -- well, usually I'd say I've got no money, but due to a rare set of circumstance I've actually got that."

"Well, I've got a brilliant idea," Will announced. "I've got drummin' practice in a wee bit, and then I'm to the athletic fields for some throwin' practice, but in just a couple oors we can get o'er to me hotel, get on the internet and find what you need for your pipes."

"Aye, that's a brilliant idea, one this oldie would ne'er have considered. What a guid friend ye are," Scottie said, cheering up a little. "But what shall I do afore then?"

"Explore!" Will suggested. "Take your mind off your troubles. Tis a bonny day for it," Will said, gazing up at the clear blue, cloudless sky underscored by trees with leaves just beginning to turn color. Will stood and said, "Well, I've got to be drummin' now. I'll meet you back here in about three oors. We'll get your pipes right and ready."

Scottie reverently placed his banged-up bagpipes in what was left of the case, got to his feet and extended his hand to Will.
"Thenk ye uncoly, Will." Will shook Scottie's hand with both of his. "See ye efter!" he said, and he walked away, his kilt wiffling as he walked.

Scottie watched as Will rejoined his drumming troupe and donned his instruments. Feeling sorrowful about his poor pipes, Scottie wished he could whisk off to pub for a pint or two to drown those sorrows. Then, with a slight tinge of happiness, he remembered that he didn't need to go to the pub! He picked up his case, walked around the log and went into his tent. He reached under the cot and slid out a large styrofoam cooler. He opened its lid and pondered which of the brews he'd purchased the night before would be his late morning liquid snack.

Unable to decide, Scottie closed his eyes, reached out and grabbed a cold bottle of... McEwan's Scotch Ale. Scottie smiled. "Ahhh... nothing like a wee heavy tae soothe the soul." He retrieved a glass from his trunk, a proper thistle-shaped vessel with, appropriately, a McEwan's logo etched into the glass. "Because if it ain't Scottish, it's CRAP!!" he exclaimed.

As Scottie carefully poured the near-black brew into the glass, a thick tan head rose ahead of the ale. He took the drink back outside and sat on the log. He held the glass up to the light and admired the reddish hue. He sniffed the head and reveled in the smoky, rum-like aroma. His first sip through the head left foam clumped to his moustache, which he promptly licked off after swallowing.

"Occhh! Deeeelicious!" Scottie exclaimed...

~ 2 ~

... William McIntosh was still practicing when Scottie tipped the glass to his lips to catch the last few drops of the thick, rich brew. "Good to the last drop!" he said, unwittingly borrowing a catch phrase. He glanced at his watch and saw that hardly 15 minutes had passed. "Surely I've got time for another one!" Scottie stood up and felt the effects of the ale's 8% alcohol rush at him. He ambled back into his tent...

... and when hardly 20 more minutes had passed, Scottie was feeling much better. Quite fine, indeed! And though he felt he could still use another one, he was aching to go walk around somewhere. So what's a drunk-and-intent-on-getting-drunker Scotsman to do? Get a plastic cup for the beer! Yes, that's almost blasphemous, but sometimes you have to do what you have to do!

Scottie made it to the sidewalk beyond the iron fence -- though his path was hardly a straight line -- when his gaze fell upon a few lads and lasses, dressed in traditional Scottish garb, climbing into a pickup truck. "Where ye foolks be off tae," he asked the driver.

"We're going hiking," the young man said. "Care to join us?"

Scottie pondered this while he took a sip of his beer, then said he would like to. He walked around to the back of the truck, lowered the tailgate, and sat down heavily. "All set!" he announced...

~ 3 ~

They didn't go very far, Scottie reckoned. He could still hear the drums playing in the field, and now the cantankerous sound of bagpipes tuning was following the breeze to where they had parked. The younguns retrieved hiking staffs from the truck bed while Scottie drank his beer. They walked through a grotto full of hikers and noisy, rambunctious schoolchildren, and their boisterous laughter cheered Scottie up a little bit more and invigorated him for the task ahead. Then he noticed the signs on the doors of the building they were passing, and he realized that, quite suddenly, he needed to relieve himself.

"Go on without me, friends," Scottie said. "I have tae drain me leg, if ye know what I mean! Don't wait up for me, it's probably best if I take this at me own pace anyhoo." The younguns nodded, wished him well, and turned to follow the other folks aiming for the trail (except they were more conservatively dressed, of course!).

Upon exiting the loo, Scottie realized he was a bit more drunk than he thought. Now, this wasn't going to stop him from finishing the beer -- or going on this hike -- but he thought it would be best if he sat down somewhere to finish. The stone walls, though there was space a'plenty to sit, were too out in the open for a beer-drinking man dressed in a kilt, not to mention the children's noise seemed to have actually increased in volume, so Scottie wandered around in a search for more a secluded spot...

~ 4 ~

"She found peace on this mountain, may you find peace here as well..." Scottie read the inscription aloud with a wee slur in his words, and heartily agreed as he swallowed the last of his beer. He stumbled (yes, he was stumbling now!) down onto the walkway and took a swig from a canteen of water he had slung over his shoulder.

"Drunk I might be, but wise I still am," Scottie muttered as he looked up the trail. And then the children came out of the grotto in sworling mass of unbridled energy that threatened to swallow him whole. He stood quietly as they passed all around him, the cacophony nearly more deafening than a troupe of pipe players.

Scottie sighed. If he followed this trail, peace he would not find here. "PREhaps I could wait a wee bit longer," Scottie muttered. "Aye, but there's no tellin' how blasted fast they'll travel! I'll end up following them the whole bloody way and I'll be driven to more drink! Bollocks!" He shook his head, and on one swing to the left he caught in his peripheral vision another path leading away from the grotto.

"Ahhh, something tells me the peace PREhaps be this-away," Scottie delighted, and he made his way to the walkway. Once he was passing through the trees and brushes the children's raucosity diminished. He took pleasure from finally being able to get moving, though the drink was definitely affecting his senses of balance and direction! As he walked along, Scottie began to whistle a tune, then took up the lyrics:

Follow this link and scroll to song #23, Beer Beer Beer...
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=106366

A long time ago, way back in history,
when all there was to drink was nothin but cups of tea.
Along came a man by the name of Charlie Mops,
and he invented a wonderful drink and he made it out of hops.

He must have been an admiral a sultan or a king,
and to his praises we shall always sing.
Look what he has done for us he's filled us up with cheer!
Lord bless Charlie Mops, the man who invented beer beer beer
tiddly beer beer beer.

"Cor blimey!" Scottie exclaimed as he tripped over something in the trail and landed on a hard rock surface. He lay there for a few seconds as the trees spun around. When they stopped, he rolled to his knees -- one of them skinned pretty good -- and got to his feet. He looked back from where he came to see what had swept his foot out from underneath him.

"A blasted telephone pole! With a guy wire planted right in the middle of the trail! Who's the plonker who thought tae put that 'ere!? Eejit!"

Knowing he could really do nothing about it, Scottie shook his head and continued along the trail. It took a wee minute or two for his pleasant mood to return, but whistling the notes to "Beer Beer Beer" certainly helped. Scottie chuckled when the thought crossed his mind, "Och, and look at me! I'm the blooming barmpot that can't walk right! And singing an Irish drinking song!! HA!"

~ 5 ~

He continued walking and continued singing...

The Curtis bar, the James' Pub, the Hole in the Wall as well
one thing you can be sure of, its Charlie's beer they sell
so all ye lads a lasses at eleven O'clock ye stop
for five short seconds, remember Charlie Mops 1... 2... 3... 4... 5...

He must have been an admiral a sultan or a king,
and to his praises we shall always sing.
Look what he has done for us he's filled us up with cheer!
Lord bless Charlie Mops, the man who invented beer beer beer
tiddly beer beer beer.

Scottie paused after the second chorus to try to get the words for the next stanza right in his head and noticed through the trees a pair of odd signs with Trails and Triangles. They weren't on the trail he was following, which was strange, but he figured since they weren't on his trail he'd pay them no mind. He was passing by an ancient fallen tree when a great crashing noise sounded from the woods behind him. He barely had a chance to look back, but when he did all he could see was a pair of big black eyes and lots of brown hair, and then another and another, all barrelling toward him.

Scottie let out a bellow and took off running as fast as he could, not wanting to find out exactly what sort of demons were chasing him! He careened off roots and swung at branches as he ran. When he dared to look behind him, in the split second he did, one foot caught on a rock in the middle of the trail, and for a second Scottie was, quite literally, a Flying Scotsman.

He landed in a tumbling heap, the hoofbeats of the hairy black-eyed beasts pounding closer until they were right on top of him, and Scottie covered his head with his arms. The beasts leapt right over him! Scottie saw each of their white-haired bellies as they sailed gracefully over his body and off down the trail, their fluffy white tails belying their species. And so, once more he was splayed out on the trail (which, thankfully, was not solid rock but much softer dirt now).

"Bloody effin' deer!" Scottie yelled. "Barmy shite deer!"

Once more Scottie rolled to his knees -- both of them skinned now -- and to to his feet. He untwisted his canteen from around his neck and under his arm and through his sash and removed the cap. He leaned on a small trailside tree as he drank, placing one hand on a splash of bright-hued color.

Scottie shook his head as he looked at the pyramidicubical rock sticking out of the trail some five yards back up the trail. "Methinks m'not guin tae find peace, today, lads! Ha-hahaha!" Scottie laughed as he replaced the cap on his canteen. He looked toward the noonday sun and saw a path, not much more than a clear way across the stone.

~ 6 ~

Right then he decided to abandon the main causeways and strike out into the wild. He tromped across the stone and followed the footpath as it meandered through swaths of tufty grasses and low-growing, lush green plants. A shadow fell upon his face and Scottie looked up.

A tall dead tree stood before him, somehow eerily majestic in its branchlessness, what with the sunlight blazing out on either side of the barkless trunk. He looked to the right of the sentinel, and the defined trail disappeared out onto open stone. He looked to the left and saw a quaint little footpath made of smallish chunks of granite.

"Ah, such a bonny quaint wee path! It beckons me tae follow it!" Scottie said happily, and he picked up the tune again...

A barrel of malt, a bushel of hops, you stir it around with a stick,
the kind of lubrication to make your engine tick.
40 pints of wallop a day will keep away the quacks.
Its only eight pence hapenny and one and six in tax, 1... 2... 3... 4... 5...

He must have been an admiral a sultan or a king,
and to his praises we shall always sing.
Look what he has done for us he's filled us up with cheer!
Lord bless Charlie Mops, the man who invented beer beer beer
tiddly beer beer beer.

The Lord bless Charlie Mops!

Scottie had gone past the end of the quaint path and back out onto open rock. The trees were all behind him or way up ahead of him, except for the strangely-shaped one to this right.

"Why, that tree's aboot the most strange tree tae ever have been! A 'U'? A 'Y' Both?" He looked up at the sun and saw that the way ahead got much steeper. And that sun -- very different from the sun over Scotland -- was blazing hot, and Scottie in his traditional woolen garb was getting quite warm. The good thing was there was a slight breeze the wiffled his kilt and at least cooled him off below the waist! But the Scottish Ales he'd drank earlier were catching up with him in the form of a headache that seemed to be intensifying with every other step.

"It must be all this exertion, I reckon," he reckoned. "More water!" Scottie swigged from his canteen and looked around. "Well, now, what's that we have o'er there?"

~ 7 ~

He turned and walked, with the sun beaming down on his right side, toward a set of boulders with perfectly flat sides and narrow channels coming down from the top edge. As he neared them, he saw that one had a bit of rusty metal stuck in it. Upon closer inspection, Scottie learned it was, actually, two or three pieces of metal, with the spike-shaped one having been quite forcefully driven into the rock betwixt the other two. (Little did he know that it was called a "plug and feather".)

Scottie knew it was quite foolish to think that he'd be able to yank that out of there, but he gave it half a try anyway. He didn't quite feel like going uphill just yet, so he kept going, with the sun on his right shoulder, along a clear path through the moss and pine needles. He was looking around, not noticing where his feet were going, when...

"Bloody hell!" Scottie exclaimed as his right foot slipped on a wet mossy patch and slid downhill, taking out his left foot. Once again Scottie landed hard on the ground, but fortunately, his skinned knees were spared. UNfortunately, he gave his elbow and shoulder quite a jolt, and he smacked his head on length of deadwood...

Momentarily knocked for a loop, Scottie lay there on the granite, motionless. When the birds finally stopped twittering in his head he sat up and considered his plan. He had been walking for only a short time, and had already been flat on the ground three times. Three times!

"Och! I've been far more cocked up than this and have never been laid out even once!" he exclaimed. He was strongly considering foregoing the notion of hiking and just getting back to camp. He DID have to tend to his banged-up pipes -- and the thought of that brought back the sorrow the ales has successfully drowned. He stood and gave that consideration more thought, and he turned to head back the way he had come.

~ 8 ~

But just then he felt a strange compulsion to continue, to bash on despite his tribulations, to boldly go where he had never gone before. Scottie took a step back to the iron plug... and the compulsion grew. Another step, and he felt like something had grabbed his sash from behind, to stop his progress. He tried to take another step, but then he felt like someone had gripped his shoulder -- and he found himself turning back around.

Scottie was gobsmacked. He stood there in disbelief, and perhaps a bit of fright seeped through those old Scottish bones. He might have stood there 'til long after sundown if he hadn't felt a tug on his sash, urging him to move along, practically pulling him slightly uphill. Scottie walked to a "crease" in the rough surface of the rock, a crease that looked as if, long ago, someone -- or something -- had taken a great carving tool and had gouged away a line in the rock, exposing an altogether different kind of rock. Scottie followed it with his eyes and saw that it led to a ledge, and beyond that, another ledge with a medium-sized pine leaning uphill.

"Och! I must get back tae the Meadow," Scottie said vehemently, to no one, really, but he hoped that whatever was urging him further on would hear.

"I've got tae get back tae me bagpipes... me poor broken pipes... just a pile of bobbins if I can't fix 'em..." Scottie hung his head... and nearly had a heart attack when he saw the neat lines of his sash bend as if someone were taking hold of it!!

His eyes nearly popped out of his head and his bearded jaw nearly fell out of its sockets. Scottie watched the flat cloth become as bunched as a rope -- and then Scottie was forcefully dragged, screaming, along the length of the 'dike', and off the ledge to the next level below. He managed to retain his footing (thankfully!), and when he finally stopped moving, he felt no more tugging on his sash.

Scottie, his heart pounding and breath coming short and fast, looked down and saw that his sash was perfectly flat against his chest, as if it had never been used as a towrope!

"That's a bugger!" he exclaimed. "What the hell is going on around here!?" Scottie looked around, wildly at first as his breathing and heartbeat raced, then more slowly. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, but then -- everything was rather unfamiliar, so he had no real foundation for what "ordinary" might be. As his scan reached the uphill-leaning pine at the corner of this ledge, Scottie stopped scanning and trained all his senses on that spot.

"What in blazes...???" Scottie squeezed his eyes shut and then blinked several times. Nope... there was something there. "My God in Heaven!" Scottie spluttered.

If he had to describe what he saw (and he did, much, much later, and everyone thought it a wonderful, brilliant tale, but a tale nonetheless...), Scottie would have said it looked like heat rising from a fire, a shimmering, shifting wave that distorted how everything behind it appeared. Now, that would be perfectly fine and dandy if there was a fire over there, but there wasn't...

And then it moved...

~ 9 ~

Scottie felt that strange, overwhelming compulsion again, and he found himself ambling toward the pine and the end of the ledge. There, he saw that the next level was only a foot or so below, so he stepped off the ledge and turned to where the shimmering shape had gone. Shielding his eyes from the bright sun, he saw the shimmer drifting uphill, just beyond a sideways-growing pine.

Scottie walked alongside the cut ledge, stepped over the pine, and followed the shimmering up to a spot where a tall dead tree stood in some brush and brambles. The ledge to his right continued on a short distance, then turned to the left. Just beyond a pine tree right up against the ledge, the rock face went from a yard and a half high to at least two and a half yards high, with a noticeable overhang. Scottie watched the shimmering closely as it moved toward the ledge-side pine.

It seemed to shrink and grow more intense as it neared the pine. Scottie moved closer, and the distortion shrunk more, then disappeared behind the pine, very close to the ground. Scottie pushed through the brambles and stood next to the overhang. He stared at the base of the pine -- there was a gap between the tree and the rock face. Small rocks clogged up the hole, but there seemed to be a luminescence coming from that hole. Scottie looked around nervously. He didn't expect any people to sneak up on him -- he was more worried about more of these... apparitions than anything else. He looked back at the hole, afraid to go over there and move those rocks.

Scottie felt a gentle pressure between his shoulderblades, pushing him forward to the tree.

He squatted and reached, removed the first rock, then another, and another, and another... and heard a strange yet familiar *clink*, as if...

"NO! There can't be --" Scottie moved one last rock out of the way and saw a very familiar shape in the hole...

"GREAT SCOT!" Scottie exclaimed as he stood with his prize. The smile on his face was as wide as the equator. The bloke on the label bore a striking resemblance to himself, and the bottle he held in his hand was as cold as if he'd just pulled it from an ice chest. "Highland Brewery Gaelic Ale," he read. "Brewed in Asheville, North Carolina -- a bonny sight tae see if there ever was one!"

"They're all guin tae think I'm nutters," Scottie said as he reached into his jacket pocket and retrieved a bottle opener. He half expected it to be flat, but the pffft! was crisp and loud. Amazingly, his plastic cup had survived the bashing about. As Scottie poured the amber liquid into his cup, he marveled at the bottle and the notion that he'd traipsed all over this blooming rock (not that far, really), fallen down three times and followed a ghost -- all to find a beer, beer, beer, tiddly beer, beer, beer...

###