Company and a crowd // Loch Lomond

A side effect of being alone is, of course, that sometimes you don't want to be by yourself. In such cases, I'm accustomed to calling a friend or simply yelling down the hall to a roommate. 

Here, in a city of a million people, it's not quite as simple. Cultivating a friendship anywhere takes time and energy, as well as a willingness to introduce oneself, ask questions, and make awkward small talk about the weather or the ceilidh dance. I drew a deep breath when I realized that I was surrounded by other students who also felt a wild relief when someone struck up a conversation or thrust a smartphone towards them, awaiting a Facebook handle or phone number. In such a climate, I've realized, friendship tends to snowball in a rather beautiful way. Desperate for companionship, stories we can tell our children, and pristine Instagram photos, we find ourselves wandering streets we barely know with a happy band of ten or more, pushing tables and bodies together in our delight at being known. 

I have been enormously fortunate to meet people who share my enthusiasm for wandering, museums, scones and dancing in my first few weeks in Glasgow. Some of these friendships -- when does something become a friendship? -- happened organically in the way written into indie romantic comedies with strong and alternative female leads. Others stem from a shared class or a shared flat or simply a mutual recognition of needed companionship. 

And so it was that I dragged myself out of bed on Sunday and ate avocado toast in an Uber on the way to Glasgow Central Station. A group of four, we had fixed our destination for the day: Loch Lomond. 

Famed for its role in the well-known song, as well as its great natural beauty, Loch Lomond seemed mythical to me even as I bought my train ticket. And yet for £5.90 I booked a return journey to Balloch, scarcely an hour away from Glasgow and situated on the bonnie banks themselves. And despite my newfound adoration of time alone, I walked through wet meadows and patted ecstatic dogs not by myself, but with company. 

To be anonymous in a city is terrifying and exhilarating, and it is a different kind of exhilaration to be anonymous, as it were, with others.

Looking across the lake, we hoped aloud, together, that the sun would peek through the clouds, and together we exclaimed at the vista and the swans and the warm cup of tea that awaited us at the end of our adventure.