I’ve started packing
in preparation for leaving London. My clothes and books are going into storage,
to be unpacked and rediscovered in a new life in Berlin, while all I need for
the 65 days of walking and living on a path is going in a rucksack. I’ll be camping
most nights. Whenever I’ve camped before it’s been with friends, with cooking
kit and tent pegs split over the party, this journey will be the first time
that I have camped alone. I’ve begun to walk alone though, to train myself
physically for what’s to come but also mentally. The past year has been one
where I’ve avoided being alone with my thoughts, where I’ve tried to crowd the
ache of sadness from my mind with chattering. Silence has been a threat – disclosing
inner discord. For a long time my customary retreat, of reading, was also
denied to me. I have never before put away so many books unfinished. So this
long, often solitary journey I’m soon to begin will be one where I’ll be
reacquainted with me, and with the thoughts I have tried to avoid. I expect
this to be painful, but I also know that the path will aid me, and that the sea
is going to be my companion for every step. The sea, which restores me.
I recently walked the
Chilterns, alone apart from flying ants that dive bombed me for fun. The sky read grim in the morning, with
bottom heavy clouds seeking rest on nearby hills, but the longer I walked, the
lighter the day became. Walking,
just walking, feels an indulgence at times when duties press, but this day I
had nothing to do but walk, and make my own the memories of these hills I have previously
always shared. I followed a river for miles, sometimes walking by its side and
resisting the urge to dip my feet in, but more often from a distance, climbing
to the edge of the valley and out of earshot of its hurry onwards. As the afternoon
drew on the path became a muddy track where stones made a natural staircase,
and at the summit, it described the edge of a bluebell wood. I stopped and the
air seemed to hold silence, while a veil of gnats danced in emerging sunlight.
History looks like this. Over the valley and behind me the sky had cracked
open, a chasm of sunshine spilling onto green fields and setting alight the
river.
I was the only person in view and that land, just then, felt like it was
mine.
