The Salt Path: A Memoir

by Raynor Winn

Tell me about a complicated man. Muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost . . . Homer, The Odyssey

After three years and ten court appearances, we had the evidence that could save our home. We’d sent copies to the judge and the claimant’s lawyer. We were ready.

“Good morning, sir. I hope you received the new evidence which was supplied to you on Monday.” “I have.” “If I can refer you to that evidence—”

“Sir, this information which you and I have both received is new evidence.” The judge looked at me accusingly. “Is this new evidence?” “Well, yes, we only received it four days ago.” “New evidence cannot be proffered at this late stage. I cannot accept it.” “But it proves everything we’ve said for the last three years. It proves that we don’t owe the claimant anything. It’s the truth.”

“You can’t produce evidence without the correct judicial procedure. No, I’m going to proceed to judgment. I will give possession to the claimant. You will have vacated the property in seven days’ time, by nine a.m. on that day.

“I request the right to appeal.” “No, I’m denying the right to appeal. This case has gone on for far too long; you’ve had plenty of opportunities to supply evidence.”

It didn’t matter that we had only just found this evidence, or that it contained the truth; it only mattered that I hadn’t submitted it in the correct way, that I hadn’t followed the correct procedure.

We’d both be homeless in five days; then we’d know.

What I didn’t know, what I couldn’t know, was that it wouldn’t take five days for my life to change forever, for everything that kept me stable to turn to quicksand beneath me. It would happen the next day. We were in a consultant’s room in a hospital in Liverpool. Finally, we would have the results of years of medical procrastination and we’d know the cause of Moth’s shoulder pain.

But this doctor wasn’t behind his desk; he came and sat on the corner of it next to Moth, put his hand on his arm and asked him how he was. It was wrong. Doctors don’t do that.

“The best thing I can do for you, Moth, is give you a diagnosis.” No, no, no, no, no. Don’t say anymore, don’t speak, something awful is going to fall out of your smug, tight lips, don’t open them, don’t speak. “I believe you have corticobasal degeneration, CBD. We can’t be absolutely certain about the diagnosis. There is no test, so we’ll only know at postmortem.”

The doctor looked at me as if I were a child; then he carried on trying to explain a rare degenerative brain disease that would take the beautiful man I’d loved since I was a teenager and destroy his body and then his mind as he fell into confusion and dementia, and end with him unable to swallow and probably choking to death on his own saliva.

There were no drugs to halt the progress, no therapies to keep the disease at bay. The only help that could be offered was a drug called Pregabalin to ease the pain, but Moth was already taking that.

The first time Moth told me he loved me was the first time I’d ever heard those words said. No one had ever said they loved me before, not my parents or friends, no one ever before, and those words had lifted me up, shining, glowing, into the next thirty-two years of my life. But words had no strength against Moth’s brain shifting into self-destruct, against a protein called tau sludging up the cells, blocking the connections.

Smotyn didn’t come. She always came to the stile for her slice of bread. Always. As I looked around the fields for her, I already knew what I was going to find. In her favorite spot under the beech trees, her head laid out on the grass as if she were sleeping. She knew. She knew she couldn’t leave her field, her place, and had simply died. Put her head on the grass, closed her eyes and died.

All-consuming and uncontrollable. I curled on the grass next to her and sobbed. Crying until my body stopped, spent, drained of tears, dried out by loss. The grass wrapped around my face and I lay under the beech trees and tried to die, to let go and be free with Smotyn, free to fly with the swallows and not have to face leaving this place, or the desiccation of Moth. Let me die now, let me be the one to go, don’t let me be left alone, let me die.

Moth came out and we silently dug the hole together, refusing to speak, refusing to acknowledge the hole as it grew. The blackness that we had looked into the day before was still too shocking, too new for us to admit its existence, even as an idea. I covered her head with a tea towel; we couldn’t look at her as the soil fell on her face. She was gone. It was all over. The dream that had been the farm was buried with her.

I hated the doctor, sitting on the edge of his desk delivering his diagnosis as if he were presenting a gift. The best thing I can do for you, Moth, is give you a diagnosis. It was the very worst thing he could do. 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 every time I looked at Moth. We stumbled through those days as if we had just come from a battlefield, scarred, shocked and lost.

I took a deep breath. “Let’s pack the rucksacks then, and make it up as we go along.” “The South West Coast Path it is then.”

A sixty-liter pack, stuffed with our old orange canvas tent and two slightly rusty billy cans. Twice around the room and he was on his knees in agony. “Get this off me. I can’t do it.”

But it was obvious that we would have to walk it the other way around, from Poole to Minehead. The early section from Minehead to Padstow seemed by far the hardest, and the latter stretch from Plymouth to Poole the easiest. So it made absolute sense to walk the other way around and give ourselves time to adjust before we hit the harder sections.

it quickly became apparent that there was no guidebook that followed the route from south to north; they all went from north to south.

We’ll just start in Minehead and take it really, really slow.” Moth was stroking my hair, but all I wanted was to get into a sleeping bag and cry. Don’t crumble now. You’re supposed to be the strong one, you’re not the one that’s going to choke to death. Easily derailed, I was only just hanging on.

The South West Coast Path While some might be daunted at the prospect of walking for weeks on end, staying somewhere different every night, while keeping themselves fed and watered, it is simply a matter of careful planning. Paddy Dillon, The South West Coast Path: From Minehead to South Haven Point

“Hi, guys, you’re loaded up, where you going?” “Land’s End, if we make it.” We still didn’t feel confident enough to say all the way. “Wow, well, good on ya. You’re only as old as you feel. Good luck.”

“How old did he think we were?” “Doesn’t matter, apparently we’re as old as we feel.” “Yeah, right.” “I feel like I’m fucking eighty some days, I’m so fucking tired. I hurt, everywhere.” Moth threw his pack down and squatted on the rocks. “Can’t tell if I feel half asleep or wide awake. It’s like my head’s in fog and I’m walking through molasses. This is the most bollockingly stupid thing we’ve ever done. I want to lie down.”

I sat with my back to the football and the wind in my face, looking out over the end of the Bristol Channel and the start of the wide, endless Atlantic Ocean. It’s wild here, a corner where tides, winds and tectonic plates collide in a roar of elemental confusion. A place of endings, beginnings, shipwrecks and rockslides. The viewpoint by the railings caught the air and rushed it up in a jet of cold, oxygenated, sea-spray fizz. I flew with the power of the uplift: alive, we were alive.

We watched as the gulls dipped over our heads to the cliff edge, then dropped toward the bay to join hundreds of others floating on the calm water, protected by the rock fin. “They’re sleeping on the water; it’s their safe place.” “It is safe here, isn’t it? Protected. I’d live here if I could.” Moth paused for a moment. “When it’s over, you could bring me back here if you like.” “What do you mean? When the walk’s over?” “No. When it’s all over.”

“Shall we swim?” The deep water was cool, but pockets still held the warmth of the day. Floating in the darkness, Moth pushed out into the gently moving bodies of gray, bobbing in near silence around him. The moon caught their white heads, occasionally turning toward him in untroubled curiosity. We hung weightless in the salt as everything drifted from us and was lost. All that remained was the water, the moon and the murmuring forms that shared the sea. The gulls settled into a dark blue rhythm, as the cool dampness of night finally drove us into the tent. It’ll never be over; we’ll never be over.

Often, for undaunted courage, fate spares the man it has not already marked. Seamus Heaney, Beowulf

Stupid, stupid, stupid. Stupid to think we could walk this path, to not have enough money, to pretend we weren’t homeless, to get the court procedure wrong, to lose the children’s home, to not have enough water, to pretend we weren’t dying, to not have enough water. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Die—just do it and die now. Don’t drag me through death with you. If you’re leaving, just go, don’t condemn me to years of letting go, sitting by, waiting for the iced blade to cut my heart out, rip me bone from bone, leave me macerated, spewed out, screwed up. If you’re going, just go, get it over with. I can’t say good-bye, can’t live without you. Don’t leave, ever. Leave. I’m already dead. I died when you let that demon take our home and throw our children into the street. Yes, death, come and save me, save me from you, save me from ever having to say it’s okay again.

We spat out words of pain, self-pity, hate—for judges, doctors, false friends, each other. The scratching, desperate need for water took over from every other need, hid the pain in our joints, the battered and blistered feet, the sunburned, cut and bruised skin. Nothing else mattered; we needed water and we needed it now.

When you tell a story, the first person you must convince is yourself; if you can make yourself believe it’s true, then everyone else will follow.

Paddy Dillon walks from Hartland Quay to Bude—one of the most remote and difficult sections of the whole path—in a day. It had taken us three. But we survived, as we were surviving all the boulders of pain that had brought us to the path. Things we thought we would never be able to bear were becoming less jagged, turned into round river stones by the movement of the path. It was still a heavy burden to carry, but just a little less painful to hold.

As a child I was sent to the field to collect a ewe and her newborn lamb, to carry the lamb for the ewe to follow, to bring them both safely to the shelter; I picked the lamb up but realized the ewe was about to give birth to a second. So I waited, lying on my back in the wet spring grass, clouds rushing overhead, the ewe only feet away, giving birth, as the first lamb found its feet. I knew then that I was one with everything, the worms in the soil, clouds in the sky; I was part of it all, within everything, and everything was within my child’s head. The wild was never something to fear or hide from. It was my safe place, the thing I ran to.

I’d feared I would lose it, that tie to reality, when our land was lost. Sitting in the grass, wet air rushing past, roaring overhead, the dangerous, self-willed, uncontrolled, wild strength of the wind filled me up. Caught by the storm. Held up. Bonds rebound, chelated. Released. Regained. I could never lose it; I was as much the storm as I was the dry dust and the high-pitched call of the oystercatchers. All material things were slipping away, but in their wake a core of strength was beginning to re-form.

We rounded the headland past a memorial to “The Fallen.” Too tired to get my glasses out and read the whole plaque, I didn’t check if it was for the fallen in war, fallen from the cliff, or to us, fallen from society, fallen from hope, fallen from life. Of course the memorial must have been to the men who had died in the wars. Dead, gone without chance for self-pity. I tightened the hip belt on my pack, shut the door on the whining voice and kept walking. Life is now, this minute, it’s all we have. It’s all we need.

We hide ourselves so well, exposing our skin in youth when it has nothing to say, but the other skin, with the record of time and event, the truth of life, we rarely show.

Lightly Salted Blackberries Spoilt for choice—which one to throw, which to pocket and take home. Simon Armitage, “The Stone Beach”

He held out the Tupperware box, half full with glistening, ripe purple fruits. “Do you want a blackberry?” The blackberries we’d picked along the way had been small, tart and sharp, so I took one only out of politeness, but when I put it in my mouth it was like no blackberry I’d ever tasted. Smooth, sweet, a burst of rich claret autumnal flavor, and in the background, faintly, faintly, salt.

No, you need to wait until the last moment, that moment between perfect and spoiled. The blackbirds know that moment. And if the mist comes right then, laying the salt air gently on the fruit, you have something that money can’t buy and chefs can’t create. A perfect, lightly salted blackberry. You can’t make them; it has to come with time and nature. They’re a gift, when you think summer’s over, and the good stuff has all gone. They’re a gift.”

Where have you come from? Are you camping?” “Minehead, and yeah, we’ve wild camped most of the way.” “I can tell; you have the look.” “The look?” “It’s touched you, it’s written all over you: you’ve felt the hand of nature. It won’t ever leave you now; you’re salted. I came here thirty years ago and never left. I swim here every day and walk the dog. People fight the elements, the weather, especially here, but when it’s touched you, when you let it be, you’re never the same again. Good luck, wherever your path takes you.”

“Is this coast the land of sages and prophets? They seem to be around every corner.” “Salted. I like that. Flavored, preserved, like the blackberries.”

The end of an era that had lasted centuries—Cornwall’s mining history was over. But not for long; as with most things Cornish, it became a tourist attraction and now forms part of the Cornish Mining World Heritage Site. The site no longer turns out tons of metal ore; instead it mines the pockets of the visitors, a more sustainable and long-term project. The mining may be over but the heritage remains, and we’d be the poorer without it. After all, without the tin mines we might never have had pasties. Or Poldark.

“Where’s the bus heading?” Moth was shouting to be heard above the roaring wind. “St. Ives. It’s not bad there. Bloody awful here though.” “Really awful.” Over two hundred and fifty miles of pain, exhaustion, hunger, wild nights and wild weather were behind us. We could get on the bus and head away, back to the familiarity of Wales, to put ourselves on the waiting list for a council house and find a cheap campsite for the winter. Moth held my hand as the bus doors closed.

“How did you forget your words, Gerald? I had to repeat the whole verse to cover for you, I’m almost hoarse.” The fairy gave a weak little cough. “I didn’t forget, I just had to send a text. Anyway, you love the limelight.”

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. Were we searching this narrow margin between the land and sea for another way of being, becoming edgelanders along the way? Stuck between one world and the next. Walking a thin line between tame and wild, lost and found, life and death. At the edge of existence.

It wasn’t just the chill in the air, the lowering of the sun’s horizon, the heaviness of the dew or the lack of urgency in the birds’ calls, but something in me was changing season too. 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, or angry at an authoritarian system too bureaucratic to see the truth. A new season had crept into me, a softer season of acceptance. Burned in by the sun, driven in by the storms.

I was a 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.