''The Salt Path, '' by Raynor Winn
A sudden, simultaneous loss of livelihood, home and health, leaves a couple destitute in body and spirit. With nothing left, they stoically strike out into the unknown and set out to walk England’s 650 mile South West Coast Path, backpacks inadequaetely filled, souls bared. The memoir is gritty in details of the tribulations of an impoverished couple trying to wild camp, and unflinchingly honest in capturing their emotional struggles. Open to whatever the Path may bring, hoping to find a new beginning along the way, they embark on a classic, real life ‘’hero’s journey.'' and in the end, after surmounting monumental challenges on the Path, they find themselves and a new life.
Maybe it’s the American in me, but the unending succession of poor choices and disappointments that pervade their trek often made for a dreary and tedious read, almost eclipsing the couple's triumphant moments. But then, near the end, the whole journey is spectacularly reaffirmed in passages like,
‘’I was no longer striving, fighting to change the unchangeable, not clenching in anxiety at the life we’d been unable to hold on to….A new season had crept into me, a softer season of acceptance. Burned by the sun, driven in by the storms, I could feel the sky, the earth, the water and revel in being part of the elements without a chasm of pain opening at the thought of the loss of our place within it all. I was part of the whole. I didn’t need to own a patch of land to make that so. I could stand in the wind and I was the wind, the rain, the sea; it was all me, and I was nothing within it. The core of me wasn’t lost. Translucent, elusive, but there and growing stronger with every headland.’'
This is a story that inspires hope in the face of impossible loss, and for that reason alone is finding popularity. Just don’t count on a lot of laughs reading it.
Rich Flanders, author of ''Under the Great Elm - A Life of Luck & Wonder;'
Maybe it’s the American in me, but the unending succession of poor choices and disappointments that pervade their trek often made for a dreary and tedious read, almost eclipsing the couple's triumphant moments. But then, near the end, the whole journey is spectacularly reaffirmed in passages like,
‘’I was no longer striving, fighting to change the unchangeable, not clenching in anxiety at the life we’d been unable to hold on to….A new season had crept into me, a softer season of acceptance. Burned by the sun, driven in by the storms, I could feel the sky, the earth, the water and revel in being part of the elements without a chasm of pain opening at the thought of the loss of our place within it all. I was part of the whole. I didn’t need to own a patch of land to make that so. I could stand in the wind and I was the wind, the rain, the sea; it was all me, and I was nothing within it. The core of me wasn’t lost. Translucent, elusive, but there and growing stronger with every headland.’'
This is a story that inspires hope in the face of impossible loss, and for that reason alone is finding popularity. Just don’t count on a lot of laughs reading it.
Rich Flanders, author of ''Under the Great Elm - A Life of Luck & Wonder;'
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