The Only Reasonable Thing

After a long hike such as St Michael's Way, the only reasonable thing to do, really, is have scones together. I like doing this because my husband appreciates good scones as much as I do, and we found ourselves sitting outside of The Digey, in the blue chairs, and chatting. We talked about the long walk and felt a bit proud of the long walk; we wondered if we would be able to remember its foibles the next time we do that walk. We're not sure we will. It will probably be a learning curve all over again.

There were quite a few foibles, places where the authors of the instruction booklet may not have clarified terribly well; or where they forgot that Americans have a different playbook when it comes to terminology. For instance, when the playbook says, "You will come to a metaled road..." they forget that we might not know what we are looking for. Metaled? It sounded to us as if bits and pieces of a mineral deposit might be covering the path. Or, "you will come to an unsurfaced road". So I was looking for gravel (wouldn't you be?) and as I stared at the asphalt road ahead of us, there was a lack of clarity.

At about the 7th mile, the instructions were telling us to head diagonally across the field and go over the (billionth) stile where you would find a road. Just as we were about to walk toward the fence on the left, a man came climbing up over a stile to the right (we had not seen that stile yet), and headed our way.


"Going to St Michael's Mount?" he asked. "You've got about 4 miles to go." We discussed the difficulties of the written instructions we had, and he pulled out his Garmin GPS gizmo. "Here, this is what I use."

I looked at it in awe, but thought that the complicated map revealed on its face might confuse me more than I was already. For my husband, though, it was clearly the next best thing to sliced bread and butter. Which is always excellent.

Next the man pulled out some paper maps, and handed them to us.

"Here! You can have these. This one is the beginning, it might be helpful to your ending." He dug further. "Take the lot! I don't need them, not with my Garmin."

We weren't sure we needed them either, but didn't want to refuse his kindness. 

"Well, thank you very much," said my husband, as we watched him go.

We now knew the right direction. It was really our last confusion, for we soon began seeing The Mount in the distance. Every once in a while it would disappear, and then later peek back out at us. It was encouraging to have something as magnificent as that out ahead, leading us unfailingly to the end of our quest. 

"My feet hurt," I said, gazing at the huge Mount on our left.

"So do mine," said he. "Do you want to go to The Digey when we get back, or that place you like in Marazion?"

We looked at each other. Was there any question, really?

"The Digey".

It was the only reasonable thing.


See you along the way!
the SconeLady