The Salt Path

by Raynor Winn

I tried to keep a calm face, but inside I was screaming, panicking, like a bee against a glass pane.

The real world was there, but suddenly out of reach.

I lay under the beech trees and tried to die, to let go and be free

free to fly

Let me die now, let me be the one to go, don’t let me be left...

I wished he could take it away, and let me live without knowing. I didn’t want to see the black void of my future

At the farm we could shut ourselves away from everyone, couldn’t we? On our island.’ That’s what the farm had been to us, in every way: an island.

As soon as we left the road and drove into the forest, we left the rest of the world behind. Beyond the trees the views opened up as if we had entered another world.

But now we were cast adrift, with no safe haven to return to, floating through fog on a raft of despair with no notion of where we would come ashore, or if there would be a shore at all.

The South West Coast Path: From Minehead to South Haven Point,

Would 630 miles be far enough to go to find the answer?

And ahead of us? The walk, only the walk.

Travelling in the knowledge that you have a point of return gives you the will to keep moving away. There’s always a door you can return to and drop your bag, even if that door is the thing you’re escaping from. But the feeling that day was entirely different. There was no door. The space I inhabited in that moment was the safest, securest place I had and I didn’t want to move.

‘Do we have a plan?’ ‘Course we do. We walk, until we stop walking, and maybe on the way we find some kind of future.’ ‘That’s a good plan.’

Being separate from people for large chunks of time had reduced our tolerance levels, but for a moment it was comforting to feel part of humanity. For a moment.

Spoilt for choice – which one to throw, which to pocket and take home. ‘The Stone Beach’, Simon Armitage

The lady set off, in search of summers long past, always just around the next corner. On a basic level, maybe all of us on the path were the same; perhaps we were all looking for something. Looking back, looking forward, or just looking for something that was missing. Drawn to the edge, a strip of wilderness where we could be free to let the answers come, or not, to find a way of accepting life, our life, whatever that was.

The ease with which he’d walked out of his job carried the security of youth. The conviction that anything can be dropped today, safe in the belief that something else can be picked up tomorrow. Does that fade with age, as we look to the horizon and see time running out?

Only one thing was real, more real to me now than the past that we’d lost or the future we didn’t have: if I put one foot in front of another, the path would move me forward and a strip of dirt, often no more than a foot wide, had become home.

something in me was changing season too. I was no longer striving, fighting to change the unchangeable, not clenching in anxiety at the life

new season had crept into me, a softer season of acceptance. Burnt in by the sun, driven in by the storms.

we had the wet grass and the rhythm of the sea on the rocks. Could we survive on that? We knew the answer, but to give up on this and return to the world didn’t seem like the answer either.

Had I seen enough things? When I could no longer see them, would I remember them, and would just the memory be enough to fill me up and make me whole?

Could anyone ever have enough memories?

Some wrong decisions are easy to spot and easy to rectify: you get on the wrong train; you get off at the next stop. Others you don’t know are wrong until it’s too late to step back.

Homelessness had taught me that however much people think they want to help you, when you enter their home, you quickly become a cuckoo in their nest, a guest that outstays their welcome. Or their usefulness. But here we were useful, for a while yet at least.

‘That’s a good decision, when you’ve got nowhere to go, to just keep moving. It’s the staying still that drags people down.