The Great Affair

"The great affair is to move," said Robert Louis Stevenson, and so after three nights and two full days in Edinburgh, we said adieu to the city.  

Indeed, being here felt very much like an affair -- a dalliance with another time and place, fleeting, dynamic and irresistible, never quite mine.

On the last evening, before a big group outing to get fish and chips, some of us took the Hume Walk up to the top of Calton Hill, where what looks like half of the Parthenon sits.

All around, the city spread out like handfuls of shiny pebbles, swathed by the Forth of Firth, an estuary that leads We sat below the pillars, wind whipping through our hair, catching our clothes.  We spoke of many things, like so many people had done before us in this city, and perhaps in this very place.