Today I am in de middle of my walk. And a middle suggests a beginning and although there is one, it was only chosen randomly. I am still not sure if it was the day I was supposed to start walking and postponed for a day or if it should be the day when I actually closed the door behind me. Or it might in fact have been the moment when the thought of walking from Barcelona to Paris first entered my head. Or when the decision to really do it was taken. But at the same time it was the first time I mentioned my idea to somebody else, put it in words, let it go out into the world to make it more difficult to turn it around, knowing that defending not going after all would taste like defeat. Or maybe even three years ago when I decided I would only walk from that moment on, be a walking artist, a modern life nomad, living in different worlds at the same time, being at home everywhere but most of all in my own skin, on my own feet. And probably it was even further away in time, maybe it started in my childhood when I roamed the vast forest behind my grandparents´ house with my handmade survival kit, building huts, pretending I was living on my own in the middle of nature, learning about birds and trees and tasting everything I imagined might be edible.
There have been many beginnings like there have been many walks and in fact every walk is part of the same walk and every beginning is part of the same beginning. I don´t really know where the middle is since it will only become clear when there is an ending. I count on 90 years, but you never know. The walking teaches me that you should never count on anything. Save your battery, even if you can´t imagine the next day will be cloudy and the solar panels will generate very little power. Be prepared to be either hungry or carry food with you all day because you never know if the villages you will be walking through have a foodstore or a restaurant and if there will be fruit trees or vegetable fields on your path. Sleep with your clothes on because even though the old shed looks deserted and the field neglected, the owner might still wake you up in the early hours of the morning, checking on his property. Make sure you have a back-up plan when you sleep under the clear starry sky in case later on the clouds come in and rain will fall down. Be prepared to deal with people who treat you rudely, think you are a fool, don´t have a clue why somebody would want to do something like I am doing even when you believe in humankind being capable of thinking differently than what history is showing us.
Never count on anything but always trust that somehow it will work out and in the end it always does, although when you are in the middle of it, it might be hard to anticipate when the end will take place. Don´t loose your patience though. Patience is the key to it all. Be slow. Do things when the time is right. When you don´t know what your next steps should be or in what direction they should go, just wait. Wait and something will happen.
I wrote it before and I write it again here: walking makes time disappear. There isn´t really a beginning or a middle or an ending. There is only now, this day, this moment, and the beginning is in it just as much as the ending is. It doesn´t matter where I go because I am not going anywhere. I stay in this moment again and again.
Today I am not walking. I sit still. I watch the fog rise. I sit in the morning sun, the midday sun and the late afternoon sun. I listen to the dog snoring. I look at the cats moving from sunny spot to sunny spot, from window sill to woodpile to the dusty path and back again. I watch the curious chicken enter the kitchen, the wasps building their nest next to the door, the dragonfly moving through the air from room to room to find a way out. Now and then I think about the past days and the days to come but not too much. They will come anyway. I am only here today.
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