Rapids, Endings, Walking On
We wake early, too early even for the 6:30 alarm. We're hundreds of kilometers south of Dublin, and our flight home leaves at 3pm today. There's a bus that will get us there in plenty of time, but we've been unable to get the website to process seat reservations, so we're nervously jumping for the bus an hour earlier, just in case.
It's warm already when we leave the house. After weeks on the west coast of Wales, it's strange to have the morning sun over an eastern sea — but we're back in Ireland for just a day. The water shines, still. Our shoulders brush the clumps of high-growing pink valerian. I watch Eileen's sky-blue pack bob in front of me: one last walk to get to the bus.
As with many overuse injuries, six weeks of rest is a good prescription for burnout. Walking is good for processing, and according to Fitbit, I've done a little over 400 miles on this trip. All this walking, and I've rarely put in headphones — I breathe, and think, and write in my head.
I have had time to remember what I like. This summer, in Juneau, I will rock climb. I'll hike and draw and practice languages. I'll try out a career in creative work: climate communication with writing and photography for The Nature Conservancy and my tribe.
This fall, I have decided to finish my master's degree as a full time student, immersing myself instead of dragging it along one class at a time while also working. I have remembered that doing one thing fully is more fun and more effective than being pulled in many directions. And instead of squeezing homework hours out of weekends and evenings, I will paint silk and go out dancing.
In the fall, I'll renew my self-insemination, with life at a more sustainable pace. If it works as I hope, I'll be in a different focal place by December graduation.
Hopefully, I can keep bees again next year.
Out the bus window, I say a mental goodbye to sheep, our daily companions. I gaze out over the patchwork hills, pasturelands so unlike home, a brighter shade of green. I'm looking forward to the warm earth scents of my home forest, the depth of hills covered by conifer trees.
I think Wales in the sunshine may be the loveliest country I've ever seen, and I have seen a lot of this Earth. Somehow, we've had sunshine all six weeks, in two countries known for the rain.
We've pushed our bodies. Eileen has had time to overuse a knee and heal it again. I've pushed a few physical boundaries myself on her rest days — and been rewarded with new muscles.
Hiking alone, I've made temporary friends with other hikers, and sat still enough to not spook a mountain goat family as I soaked my feet in the pool of a waterfall.
Hiking together, I've gotten to know cousins I haven't really known for years, and then said a too-soon goodbye hopping off the train while they continued on to Dublin.
I've shared beds and bunks and the back of a van with my mother, hotspotted shitty wifi, passed photos back and forth on our phones. It's our Africa trip from five years ago in some ways, but very different in others: her birthday and mother's day again, and we're still following through with underresearched plans.
It's been a lot more expensive, a bit more beaten-path, but somehow not much less challenging. We've had even less space to ourselves, a lot more logistical constraints — food is easy but pricey, lodging is hard, transportation either exists or it doesn't. That's more a function of the rural UK than of us. We still priotitize breakfast, carry a chocolate bar, get frustrated, talk about life together, trust each other to work the logistics out.
Six weeks, we agree, was just right. We didn't see all of Wales, but we did enough to raise the brows of an average Welsh person. In Ireland, we managed the whole Wicklow Way (with one taxi section, but we added other detours — within the parameters to count.)
We walked a lot, but didn't make mileage the measure of our trip. We even cancelled the last hike to go canoeing instead, when most of the group was feeling tired.
It was the right choice. We saw the cliffs, the coast on our other walking days. We chose our smiles and one last day with each other.
The canoe rental in Cardigan is on an estuary. When we launched, it was low tide already and going out.
Over little rapids, the boats began to drag along the rocks, until we clambered out to wade and drag them upstream. The river water tugged cool against our ankles, stones slippery underfoot. We balanced and towed, laughing and balancing in the warm sunshine.
In deeper water, we climbed back in to paddle: around the corner, a quiet bird reserve, water flanked with oak trees. It was a quiet space, just for us.
At the next rapids, Eileen and Michelle pulled into an eddy. I dared Alison to paddle hard with me, cheered her on as she climbed out to tow, all of us laughing together as all our attempts to progress upstream failed and she fell in, fingers still wrapped around the bow of the boat.
It's a funny thing to see: the family traits shared across the four of us, and yet the entirely distinct personality types. It's a view across the decades represented, nineteen to sixty-three.
I remember my nineteen and early college. I can almost imagine a path between thirty-one and fifty-two. Every one of us has things that matter a lot only in our current moment, and choices to make that will shape the next years. It's easier to see that things never settle, when all these life stages are right in front of you.
This is life: the fear and the power of never knowing what will happen, what might have happened. Our utter helplessness in the face of something as large as the universe, or as small as the schedule of a bus. The ways our own choices and reactions shape how it feels to live our moments, and how they shape the experiences of those around us.
I fell in love with walking because it showed me the power of my own body, unassisted, to get anywhere. It's one step after another, the joy of muscles and air and choosing to keep going, or not. It's getting into situations, and getting out of them; relying on yourself but accepting kindness when it comes.
Every time I walk, I learn more to trust: my legs, the way, the people I'm walking with. As always, I'm getting somewhere — whatever comes next.
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