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<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\nThe next day was spent entirely on the Affric Kintail Way, a dedicated hiking trail (with a few road portions), some of it recently built. A man on an e-bike and a woman on an e-tricycle passed me at one point. The AK Way seems to have been built with such uses in mind, unlike the old footpaths in the hills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In some places it was a gravel road, probably an old logging road.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After a lot of climbing I turned downhill. Ahead of me were two people sitting on a tree trunk lying across the path. I asked if I could sit with them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Sure,” said one of them, in a trimmed beard and an American accent. “We just took it down for you.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n The other was a man I’d talked to from a distance the day before as he sat beside the road eating peanut butter and crackers for lunch (as he was doing again). He was Dennis; the other was Roger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Roger retired last year as the “senior master” at The Salisbury School, a boys prep-school in Connecticut. He’d taught there for years, starting as a math teacher and finishing as an instructor in boat-building and industrial arts. He’d done a lot of canoe camping but not much backpacking. Like a lot of people, he’d heard about the Challenge and saved it for retirement when he had the time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As we sat and talked it began to rain, and then to hail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That didn’t last long, and as it was letting up Dennis said, “Let’s get a group picture. We’re the Septasomethings.” We were. Roger is turning 72 on the trail, I’m 74, and Dennis turns 78 in September. (“Born the same year as Prince Charlie, I mean King Charles.”)<\/p>\n\n\n\n As the hail let up, Dennis said: “Better day for walking today than yesterday. Too hot then.” (And he was serious.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Amazingly, Dennis is still working. He’s retired from a university job where he taught some sort of educational management, and now works 17.5 hours a week taking packages off a conveyor belt at a UPS depot. Each shift is 3.5 hours without a break, and at the end you’re told how many packages you missed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n “Just like Amazon,” he said. And then he added: “It’s like being in the gym.” I felt like asking him why he had to do it, but I didn’t. He plans to retire in September.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There commenced a long, fascinating conversation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The discussion of his UPS job began a discussion of attention to workers’ needs and viewpoint. His job has little of that, but he knows enough history of 20th Century business to know that’s not a formula for success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He gave a short lecture on the management philosophy of W. Edwards Deming, the American academic who founded “total quality management,” advised the Japanese car industry in the 1950s about the importance of sweating the details (and making the way for its ascendancy over American manufacturing in the 1970s and 1980s), the ignorance of its principles, which led to the nationalization, downfall, and breakup of British Leyland in the 1980s. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If people don’t pay attention to their workers, and enlist them in finding a better way to make a better product, they will fail, he said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In the case of British Leyland–once the maker of Triumph, Jaguar, and Rover–“workers eventually were nicking parts just because they were tired of being ignored.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “But why did British Leyland executives not realize this?” I asked, perhaps naively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “They were public school toffs who spent the day in their clubs and playing golf, coming down to the plant once in a while to see how things were going.” He paused: “Brilliant designs, though.” (I’m sure he is serious about that, too.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Before you think Dennis is some sort of die-hard socialist I should note that hanging off his pack was a plastic reproduction of the Union Jack in black and white–a bit like the black-and-white starts and stripes (with the single blue stripe) one sees in MAGA World. I have no idea if this is Brit-MAGA adjacent, but it’s worth noting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But we really didn’t talk about a lot about politics. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We talked about, camping gear, and cold weather clothing, which somehow got us to Ernest Shackleton’s Antarctic adventures and heroism, which Dennis recounted in detail. I knew much of it, but he had anecdotes and observations I hadn’t heard (or at least didn’t remember). <\/p>\n\n\n\n We talked about his home, Manchester, England, and demise of mining in the region. I asked him if any of his people had been in mining. He said no. One of his grandfathers had been in Word War I “and had never really got over it. He was never able to hold a job very long.” Then he added: “My dad never really got over World War II either.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n If we’d been alone, and we’d had more time together, I would have asked him to elaborate (and I’m sure he would have). But I didn’t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He did almost all the talking. All of it was interesting. I missed some of it because of his accent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We eventually got to a steep pitch. Roger was ahead of us. I didn’t feel I was holding Dennis back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “That’s the difference a few years makes,” I said, looking at Roger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “I find it’s better to keep your head down, not look at the hill,” he said. “I also find it’s easier when you’re walking with someone.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n The current route of the Affric Kintail Way is not on the Ordnance Survey maps–Britain’s equivalent of our USGS maps–we had on our digital apps or on paper. There were a couple of confusing spots where we had to consult our references.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “I’m all analogue,” Dennis said. He pointed to his watch, which had a face and hands. Around his neck was a plastic sleeve that held his paper maps, But he wasn’t all analogue. <\/p>\n\n\n\n He had a Garmin InReach mini, which is device that allows you to determine your location anywhere through satellite GPS, and also to communicate by text to emergency rescue services. Dennis got his out to determine the grid reference where we were.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “I’m glad to use this thing,” he said. “It cost enough.”`<\/p>\n\n\n\n We came down into Drumnadrochit, looking at the lovely valley on our left. <\/p>\n\n\n\n At the base of the hill we came to–unaccountably–a redwood tree. In fact, there were two, one clearly an offspring. There was a trail marker that talked about the family whose estate now comprises this piece of public land, and a mention of the tree, but no explanation of how or why it’s there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n