I was hesitant to make a 3 km detour to Orrius to see if I could find some food there. I could survive for another day on my last supplies and the things I would find, but the thought of some proper food was tempting. It is nice to try to live on little and eat cactus fruits, berries and wild edible greens but this journey isn´t about hardship or endurance, although it is automatically part of it. Furthermore it is hard to survive on little if you have to walk and write and arrange your shelter every night, surviving on food in the "wild" can work well, but only if you can spend a big part of your day on hunting and gathering.
My fear that everything would be closed in Orrius or even no cafe or shop present was unnecessary. The street entering the village was called "The street of the oven" and it let me straight to the cafe that was a bakery as well. There was a small restaurant next to it and a butcher shop. The terraces were filled with people and on the city square in front of the church a group of musicians was just starting to play their flutes and drums while a female giant was lifted into the air to make her walk through the dusty streets. I had arrived at the perfect moment.
I allowed myself the luxury of a cafe con leche with a croissant, bought bread and discovered that the butcher also sold cheese and fruit and other things. I washed myself in the cafe, spent some time on the terrace, happily being surrounded by people after a few solitary days. The giant came back, more music and the crowd dispersed. I sat on a bench for a few more minutes and smiled when a car parked in front carrying the word "pathfinder".
I continued my walk, the bag now weighed heavily on my back, having bought supplies and I wondered what was the best way to go about this journey, stay on the hiking trails and now and then buy enough food for a couple of days or travel more lightly and make more detours to walk through villages to eat. Let´s see. Time will tell. And hopefully my back and shoulders will get stronger. I am a bit out of practise and the 12 kilo´s I carry without water and food are actually my limit for comfortable walking but finding water is more difficult than I thought, even with the Lifestraw bottle that filters polluted water. If there is no water around at all, it doesn´t help much. No streams or wells or lakes or puddles even. The land is dry and there is no rain. Comfortable at night, when I am warm and dry but it makes me carry some extra weight that makes it hard for me to walk much more than 3 kilometers in one go. I take a lot of breaks and still don´t walk too much in a day but it will improve.
I found traces of chestnuts! I had been looking for them, a great food source and I love them but there were only empty shells. Maybe later on in the walk. The trail was steep and I was happy I hadn´t decided to bring my walking cart. It is great for keeping the weight of your back and makes it easier to carry more or carry the same weight easier but here, and also in the days before, it would have been quite a burden.
The first loss. It always happens, you loose things and you find things. Most things I have with me are easily replacable but everything is chosen with care and comes in handy. This was only the cloth hanger I use to hang my jacket from my backpack though and I will find a new one. I praised myself for making sure things are always tied to my backpack well so the jacket was still there .... (I learned from an earlier journey where I lost it along the road but was lucky enough to find it after a long detour and many worried thoughts). The intriguing thing was that the moment I discovered the loss of my cloth hanger, pausing next to a rock in the middle of nowhere, I found a piece of a jigsaw puzzle next to my feet. Another piece of the puzzle. I had collected other pieces on other days throughout the years and this one looked like it matched the ones I found in Stoke-on-Trent last year when I was on a walk in my suit with Phil Smith, also known as Mythogeography.
At six, when I was hoping to walk another hour before the sun would set, I passed the ruins of a house. Never miss the opportunity of a good shelter at the end of the day so I made myself comfortable inside. It was a big mess, complete chaos, stones and beams and pipes and rubbish everywhere but I covered a small open space with a soft layer of weeds, put my air mattress and sleeping bag on top, installed my hunters knife, phone and walking stick, even though it felt perfectly safe.
I slept for a bit and then woke up and exchanged some silent words with friends in Spain, Poland and the Netherlands. Crazy how these two world get together in this lonely ruin in the mountains, thanks to my solar powered iPad and my mobile internet. It makes me realise again we live in amazing times and so much is possible these days. We just have to make sure we make good use of it instead of fucking things up.
No comments:
Post a Comment