Seven years ago, I walked the Camiño dos Faros, a 200km path that follows the coast of Galicia from the fishing village of Malpica to the lighthouse at Cabo Fisterra.
Walking the camiño was the culmination of a years-long process of recovery and self-discovery in which I systematically took my life and identity apart. As I journeyed to the end of the earth, I carried the last remaining fragments of myself in my hands, and in a series of rituals, cast them into the ocean. At last, I found a way to let go. And, walking away from the end of the trail, I began a new phase of life.
There’s a difference between living a story and being able to tell it. I wanted to give myself time to piece things together again. But over recent years, I’ve begun walking the paths of my memory through journal entries, photographs, stories and research. Over the next three weeks, I want to share some extracts from my ongoing writing project about my experiences.
I hope you don't mind, but I'm co-opting you as a beta reader. So, I'd love to hear your thoughts and reflections. What you’re about to read is work in progress, because this new life is work in progress. But this is the beginning.
Running out of road
It takes time to realise I have run out of road.
I cruise along life’s highway, windows down, the roar of wind in my ears, music trailing in my wake. Cities and fields blur, and I barely notice the places I pass through. I imagine the way ahead will always be wide and clear, that I can push on forever towards the always-retreating horizon. Then, suddenly, there is no more road. Distracted by the exhilaration of my speed, I miss the warning signs to slow down and narrowly avoid crashing to a halt.
Reaching the end of the road is bewildering. Leaving the engine running, I step out of my car onto tyre-slicked tarmac. I stare across the wasteland ahead, wondering how it is that the highway does not continue. Did someone forget to keep building it? Does nobody wonder what lies beyond the horizon? Behind me, the road is reassuringly straight and certain. But I’ve reached a dead end. Sure, I can accept that for now, though perhaps there is another route forward, a turning I missed a while back, a detour I can take to reach my destination?
So, I get in my car and head back the way I came. But every junction brings me back here, eventually, to this point, the end of the line. Back to the silence, the distance, the infinite space that stretches out across trackless land.
Again and again, I stand, puzzling at the road’s sudden ending, as the car’s motor hums into the silence. Again and again, I get back in the driving seat, reverse and roar away. Again and again, I return here to the end of everything.
Then, one day, I finally run out of gas. There is nowhere left to go. Stepping out of my broken-down car and standing in the silence at the end of the road, I hear the voice carried on the breeze, calling me to discover what lies beyond the horizon.
I gather my most precious belongings and place them in a bag. It is almost time to take my first step.
Beginning the journey
As with all stories about journeys, I was already in motion before I realised I was travelling.
My journey begins in the book section of an ordinary garden centre in middle England. It is an unremarkable Sunday afternoon, like so many Sunday afternoons before it. But on this day, a series of decisions and indecisions finally brings me to a place of desperation, as the pressures of life close in on me from every angle, and I realise I cannot go on.
On a shelf, I spot a small collection of poems. Its title promises that these are poems that will change my life. Trusting, I open the book, and Mary Oliver's The Journey leaps from the page and directly into my heart.
“One day,” she writes, “you finally knew what you had to do, and began…”
Sometimes, a poem arrives at exactly the right moment. This is that moment. Simple words on a page demand my undivided attention, and unaware of the crowds around me, I sink on the floor. I whisper to myself, hearing my voice break as I struggle to turn the page. I rock to comfort myself as I clutch the words to my chest. Eventually, I wipe tears from my face and meet my family in the coffee shop. Something in me has broken open. Later that night, I leave my marriage.
Life, of course, goes on. Stumbling, halting, I recover myself and begin to untangle some of the threads that led me to breaking point. But looking back, I make too many decisions that keep me enmeshed in an unhappy life. The consequences of bolder choices are too hard to bear, and I cover myself with scraps of public normality. But I am privately unravelling.
Years pass. One night, I dream. I am sitting on a slate-grey beach at the edge of a wide ocean. A storm has passed, and sunlight is breaking over the horizon, illuminating the clouds. I am exhausted and empty. Looking out over the sea, I realise it is filled with my tears. Turning my head, I see that the beach is littered with whalebones and shipwrecks, washed up by the waves.
“This is what you have to build with,” the voice says.
So many dreams vanish in the morning light, but this one stays with me. It consumes my imagination. Over time, this singular dream bleeds into the reality of my dayworld, and it drives me to seek out the wild edges where land, sea and sky meet.
Adventure brings joy and pain as I push against the limitations of my body’s capability. I ache from carrying the weight of self-preservation. But despite it all, I can walk. What starts as a determination to take a single step turns into a love affair with the world beneath my feet. My mind and heart are freed by the repetitive movement of my legs. I begin to push myself further, sleep in the wild, and dream of long-distance trails. I stare at maps, wondering where and how to begin.
How can I ever be ready to let go?
And then, unexpectedly, a question comes that cuts through the indecision.
Following the coast
A dinner with friends turns into a discussion about wandering. All my fellow guests are adventurers, sharing tales of exploring canyons, climbing mountains and following trails. Their journeys through the world have changed them. I listen attentively until the conversation lulls. Finally, in the hearth-warmed silence, I summon the courage to speak of my journey, my dream and my determination.
“I love your idea of walking a long-distance trail,” Chris says. “But, with all your talk of whalebones and shipwrecks, why are you not following the coast?”
With a single question, the net that entangles me is cut.
Everyone’s existence is tied up in knots of individually inconsequential choices. Sometimes, they knit themselves together to make a soft, warm blanket that offers comfort against the urgency of the west wind. But I am caught in a tangle of threads I long to escape.
Trying to loosen one decision often leads to others pulling tighter. I struggle against a life that scratches at my skin, one that tightens against my body and restricts my movement. But it was all I had, so I learned to accept it.
But now, unexpectedly, I have a choice. I could attempt to retie the severed threads to remake the net that holds me. Or I could lean into the sudden release of tension and push through the entanglements that have kept me immobile.
It takes time to unravel the net that wraps around my life, and the loose ends offer me unfamiliar freedom. I agonise over my choices. But as I summon the courage to embrace the undoing, space appears between the tight balls of interlocked decisions. I begin to find joy in the unwinding.
Some of the knots are cut and simply fall away, still tangled and unresolved. But in all the jumble, I notice a single thread that glistens gold in the sun as it leads towards the horizon.
Finally, free to walk, I pick it up and follow it.
Pilgrim on a wandering planet
I have always been a pilgrim. Restless, unsettled and uprooted, the landscape of my life is crisscrossed by paths of perpetual wandering. And though the ground beneath me feels solid and sure, it has always been in motion. Each day, the earth at my feet turns at dizzying speed, carrying me into the bright light of the nearest star and then plunging me through the darkness towards dawn. The sun moves through space, and the whole of the Milky Way spins on its own axis. The galaxy speeds through the cosmos as space itself expands in every direction. Every hour of my life has carried me over 50 million kilometres from the place of my birth.
Even if I never walked another step along my path, every moment of my life would be marked by movement. I sense this when I gaze into the night sky. Stars that are so predictable in their motion only appear so because of the incomprehensible vastness of the universe. Against the backdrop of their orderly procession, ancient Greek astronomers noticed some heavenly bodies that seemed to make a trail of their own. They named them planētai, wanderers. Planets.
Protected by the static illusion of an unbroken blue sky, I cannot feel the motion of the wandering planet beneath my feet. At night, however, as the stars shine in the infinite deep, the earth whispers encouragement to join its adventure. In daylight, I stand at the premature end of life's road, overwhelmed by the choice of a single step.
But the voice in the darkness urges me to walk.
Dru, you write beautifully. Made me choke up to think of all the turmoil and the long path to peace.
The heartbreak of this is beautifully written and tangled up with hope. I love the image of the net being cut from you with Chris' single question.
I look forward to part two.
Big love, always