Many paths

Trail making in poetry and art.

I talk often about making a trail, but my walking reality is quite different. Moving through a landscape prescribed by paths and bounded by fences, with so many places beyond the reach of my footsteps, I rarely venture across trackless territory.

Surely, the paths I walk shape the direction of my travel? Or can I find inspiration to move through the world in a different way?

Inspiration in León

MUSAC in León - photo by Oscar Mojon Saa on Flickr

Back in 2018, I was in northern Spain. I had spent some time walking along the wild coast of Galicia - a story for another time - and I was slowly making my way home, following my curiosity across the country. I arrived in the city of León to a summer storm that washed the cathedral square clean of dust and tourists. I found a comfortable hotel room and luxuriated in crisp sheets and soft pillows as I listened to peals of thunder roll through the streets.

The next morning, the rain had passed and I gave myself the gift of time to explore the city on foot. After an essential morning coffee, I ventured to MUSAC, León’s Museum of Contemporary Art. The building has a striking, colourful, glass facade that radiates a warm invitation to visitors. And inside, the cool exhibition halls held a wonderful gift.

I had stumbled into Muchos caminos, an exhibition exploring artistic perspectives on the Camino de Santiago, the ancient pilgrim route that passes through the city. After so many days of walking, a collection of photography, videos, and other artworks would give my mind space to wander even further.

The soul of poetry

Stepping into the gallery, I was immediately struck by a quotation displayed on the wall:

«Caminante, no hay camino. Se hace camino al andar.» Antonio Machado

Underneath, there was a translation into English: Walker, there is no path. The path is made by walking.

Encountering poetry in another language is always a challenge. Every word of a well-crafted poem is heavy with history, carrying associations and assumptions from many lifetimes of speakers. Translating poetry from one language to another is an art form in itself, as words are found to express the soul of what the poet intended if not their literal meaning.

But I believe that poems can change people. Years ago, the course of my life was altered forever when I found Mary Oliver’s beautiful poem The Journey in a garden centre bookshop, and her words have followed me ever since.

And I am also a firm believer that poetry is good for the soul. A poem can hint at an expansive universe of meaning with a handful of well-chosen words, cutting through the noise of a thousand sentences with the silence of a line break.

Caminante, no hay camino

Sunset at sea

Antonio Machado is a much-loved Spanish poet, and the phrase I read on the gallery wall comes from a poem in his 1912 book Proverbios y cantares.

Caminante, son tus huellas
el camino, y nada más;
caminante, no hay camino:
se hace camino al andar.
Al andar se hace camino,
y al volver la vista atrás
se ve la senda que nunca
se ha de volver a pisar.
Caminante, no hay camino,
sino estelas en la mar.

Wayfarer, your footprints are the path and nothing more. Wayfarer, there is no path; the path is made by walking. As you walk, you make your own way, and when you look back you see the path you will never tread again. Wayfarer, there is no path; only a ship’s wake on the sea.

In many English translations of Machado’s poem, caminante is rendered as walker, but it carries so much more meaning. Wayfarer is closer, but still not quite right. Caminante’s roots are in the word camino itself - a path, a route or a way. So, a caminante cannot walk except by following a path. Machado’s assertion that there is no path, that the path itself is made in the act of walking, shakes a foundational assumption about the nature of moving through the world.

I’m also taken by the final line of the poem, which suggests the path is made like a ship’s wake across the sea. As I walked the coast of Galicia, it struck me that where land is a series of nameable things - beach, point, hill, cliff - all neatly divisible into discrete chunks with distinct identities, the sea exists as an indivisible whole. Many of the names given to different parts of the ocean are derived from the surrounding land. Seas are only identifiable because of their land borders, human fictions that are cartographically projected onto the face of the endless deep. In Machado’s imagination, every path is a journey across this infinite, trackless expanse, appearing for a short while before dissolving into nothing.

Finding the way

Muchos caminos was a rich experience, and I’m glad my feet made a path to it. As well as meeting Machado’s poetry for the first time, I gained so many insights into how people tell the story of moving through the world.

I sat in front of Gabriel Diáz’s video work, Tres caminos, once pasos, for what felt like hours. Over five years, he walked the Camino Francés, the Camino del Norte and the Camino Mozárabe, stopping to take a photograph every eleven steps and then stitching them together into long, hypnotic videos which played side by side.

It struck me how different the three ways were: the Francés following many roads and bringing so many encounters with other pilgrims; the del Norte quieter, greener, but still with roads abounding; and finally, the Mozárabe, red, dusty and largely empty.

But I saw this in all three routes: they are shared spaces. None offers a private pilgrimage, and each step is taken alongside humans, dogs, cars, lorries, and tractors. Other beings are travelling short distances along these wide paths day by day, stepping out of their doors onto the way and, after a while, returning to their lives. Are these mundane journeys pilgrimages, too?

Making a path

I also loved Esther Ferrer’s Se hace camino al andar, a community art project in which people were invited to walk with a roll of masking tape, laying a path on the ground by stepping on it as they walked. There was a video recording of the work in the exhibition. The deliberate nature of the walking entranced me. The unhurried pace - it is a practice that takes concentration. And all the tiny twists and turns as the walkers tried to move in straight lines.

Years later, all these works continue to occupy a corner of my mind. I hear Machado’s insistent call to reimagine the act of walking. I admire Diáz’s extraordinary commitment to repeatedly stop and see. I accept Ferrer’s invitation to play with the art of making a trail.

Each of these artists, in their own way, made an impression on the world with their footsteps. And they inspire me to walk the path that begins under my feet.