Sunrise in Toronto

A Cuban-American, a Spaniard and a Mexican are gathered around the bar of an airport hotel in Madrid when a disgruntled Canadian walks in...

Actually, there's no punch line here, just a character-filled, story-laden evening of posturing, disagreement and laughter that left me satisfied that my untethered year had been brought to a successful close. 

I couldn't have orchestrated it better. I was so annoyed at my choices, my actions, the airport, the person taking forever at the counter as I waited to get my flight rebooked for the next day after missing my connection back to London from Spain. And then I walked into the hotel, pulled up one of the tall stools flanking the bar, and it all made sense: this was another opportunity for adventure and engagement.

Of course, as all Cuban-Americans are dyed-in-the-wool Republicans because socialism is a dirty word in that community, it meant that the discussion amongst the four mismatched strangers in the light, airy bar was confrontational yet engaging. Laughter and teasing make disagreements more palatable. As the clock passed midnight and an awareness of my 4:30 am alarm grew, I chose to linger for just a few more minutes to carry on a most interesting conversation with the 29-year old Mexican immigrant, based in California, who looked on with both trepidation and incredulity as the bolshy Miami-born Cuban-American (a humble middle-class man, in his words, with three boats, two farms and stories that inevitably trumped everyone else's) shared his views on, well, everything.

A motley collection

I can't help but wonder how I would have felt in a similar situation sixteen months earlier. There is no doubt that this untethered time has changed me, but like a memory that you take out, re-examine and file away again, it is difficult to remember how I was before.

September 2022

Here are some data from my travels:

468 days
15.5 months
10 countries
11 airlines
26 hotels
6 Airbnbs
10 homes of friends
5 sleepovers with family
2 word-of-mouth rentals through friends
1 residential workshop in Baja
Swims in the Atlantic, the Pacific, the Caribbean Sea, the lakes of Canada and one cold river in England
Miles walked? Impossible to know
Wines enjoyed? Ditto

And the number that amazes me the most? 53 different beds. That averages a new one every 8.8 days. And I've noticed that I'm much less fussed now about my pillow, the light, the size of the mattress and even the temperature. Although never the occupant(s). I am very particular in that regard.

September 2023

Unexpected realisations:

⬥    Switzerland isn't boring. In fact, I would move to the area around Geneva in a flash. It has an intelligent and worldly expat community as well as a sprinkling of great friends of mine. And the Swiss I met were interesting, often with a multicultural background or a partner from another country. The area is at the crossroads of a Europe that no longer, however, includes the UK. Who thought Brexit was a good idea?

⬥    I was surprised that Costa Rica wasn't an immediate shoo-in for where I might live. I desperately wanted it to work as it really was my happy place. But that was more than 20 years ago. I've changed and Costa Rica has changed although my friends there are as youthful, vibrant and stimulating as always!

⬥    I started with three suitcases yet traveled Europe for the past three months (with its three seasons) with only one. We need so much less than we think we do. I suspect that when I open my storage locker in London I will be overwhelmed but hopefully not appalled.

⬥    I learned that while I am more Canadian than British, I'm neither. Or perhaps I'm both. I'm like the Third Culture Kids they talk about (the TCKs), like my children, with parents of one or two nationalities, born in a different country and raised or living in a third.

⬥    I liked having a housemate, even one so different from me, or maybe especially one so different. Regular sharing and learning and laughing makes life fantastic. So my living arrangements in London may change.

Most importantly, I learned to be myself without the need for external validation, and to search within my heart for answers to those existential questions. I'm ever-evolving, as we all are, so let's keep it lively.

And now ...

... I am gathering my wits for the upcoming trip with my mother to Australia. I hope that at 90 years of age, I'll still be traveling as she is. However, I don't consider this expedition part of my untethered year but rather a relaxing holiday with my mum and my brother. Exploration will continue, of course, but this blog is finished, the last chapter written, and the next one is waiting for the new year, its opening pages still blank.

I have had the most extraordinary time, and hope you have enjoyed all the reading over the course of these many months. Life, with all its ups and downs, its emotions and messiness, is truly awe-inspiring, and fun.

Thank you for reading, for your comments, for the countless emails I received giving me your thoughts, your reactions and even some choices you made in response to something I'd written. My heart is full.

      "In the journal, I do not just express myself more openly than I could to any person, I create myself."
                                                                                  - Susan Sontag
 

December 2023

And so my untethered year draws to a close. Not with a bang but a whimper. The gentle unwinding amidst olive groves and extreme hikes on the mountains. Quietude. Another touch of loneliness.

A surprising anxiety sets in, and I look at it with some surprise. Where is the kick-ass confidence I felt in Switzerland? There's a feeling that I landed in Mallorca and the wheels fell off. 

When I have days jammed with meditation, exercise classes and a hike, followed by an arrangement to head into Palma and then dinner with friends, I find myself craving solitude to read and write and wander in nature. When I have a yawning day in front of me with nothing on the schedule, I want to be with others, to attend classes, eat out and get on with things. I feel an urge to rush out and do.

The realisation, of course, is that I need both productive engagement with others and time alone. Writing feeds me but too much time to do so removes the impetus. A certain amount of pressure is required to produce the gems.

And the anxiety? I see it as the final rumblings of a fixed mindset becomeing a growth one. Returning to school doesn't faze me, and I just have to remind myself that being older than the other students and immersing myself in the vulnerability of psychotherapy is just a continuation of the exploration I have been doing all this year. I can turn these nibbles of anxiety into threads of curiosity.

Four of us set off for a hike the other day, just after noon. Four women in their 60s, three unexpectedly divorced within the last four years, the eldest widowed about ten years ago. One I had met at fitness classes in the village, the others were new to me. Two were English, the other Danish. They have all lived in Mallorca for at least twenty years, and share a camaraderie that comes from being early in the vanguard of change in this island, that then was still recovering from the repressions of the Franco era. It wasn't the popular holiday destination it is now.

The two divorcées live in the homes they shared with their former husbands, but one talks about dragging his motor dinghy (a boat he promised to remove from what is officially her house) to a lay-by on a highway in the hopes that someone will just take it. There is a bitterness there that contrasts with the Danish woman who returned to a convivial relationship with her ex once the divorce papers were signed a month ago, although there is no talk of a rapprochement. 

The widow was widowed from one moment to the next as it was a sudden death. I was divorced three weeks after becoming an empty-nester. I couldn't help feeling that I'd been fired. 

All four of us went through abrupt changes, without any inkling of what was about to hit us. They were life-changing events that were out of our control. Yet how complete and full of life we are on our own. As we made our way along the dried-up river bed and then up to higher altitudes, we would stop and exclaim not at the spectacular views, but at how content we were with life. 

Last evening, on a zoom call, a woman who just published a book on reframing retirement, a woman I had never met before, laughed when she explained that in her 60th year she realised that her holidays were getting longer and more elaborate because it was the only way she could be with her husband. That was unaffordable, so she divorced him. Then, after meeting a new man several years later and moving in with him, just last month she returned to her own flat, while still maintaining the relationship, because she saw that she was turning back into a wife.

It's as if wifedom has little appeal once we get a taste of freedom. It's a state we don't wish to return to regardless of whether we go on to other partnerships. I see it more and more as I move away from the couple-centric life I lived when married and begin to meet the solo travellers. It's like a secret that was kept from us, at least from those of us raised in more traditional ways. 

There is opportunity in transitioning into this next phase of life, whether by choice or not, especially if there has been transformative and oftentimes painful inner work through therapy, body work or spirituality, which most women my age have done. Some men do as well, but generally ... I don't see the same in men in their 60s and 70s.

This is not a man-bashing diatribe but a celebration of women who are complete in themselves. I have many truly lovely men in my life, and one day I hope to connect on a deeper, more intimate level with someone. But ... what's the saying? I won't be a nurse, a purse or a mother.

I suspect I will write one more post, from London, from the place I packed up and left to begin my Untethered Year, which stretched into almost sixteen months. So stay tuned. I have only a handful of days left in what has been an extraordinary adventure.

"Ah-ha!" moments continue to pop up. I had one yesterday as I rode eleven kilometres on an old sit-up-and-beg bike with only one functioning gear to a shop on the outskirts of Palma to get the rest of its gears working. It was downhill most of the way (I took the bus home 🤣), hence the arrival of random thoughts.

Montreal and Costa Rica together took up eight months of my untethered year. A full 50%. At the beginning, it was difficult to know how everything was going to unfold, even to know what I was doing, and it's only now, in hindsight, looking back from the home stretch, that I wonder why I was trying to reclaim the happiness and fun in locations from my past. I was so determined to find my place. Perhaps I hoped that if I insisted and forced and tried different tools, I could make this square peg fit into that round hole.

Montreal is a truly fabulous city, but I'm not ready to return to Canada. And no matter how happy I was in Costa Rica, it holds memories from the start of a marriage when we were young, foolhardy, able to overcome any and all obstacles in a new culture with a new language. We created our family there.

I could never match or recreate the equivalent of my time there, and to just settle because it "was fine" isn't enough.

Don't get me wrong. My past is worth celebrating. It was filled with love and adventure, the excitement of new babies, new countries, work, play and friends. But I am a different person now, without a partner, my girls far-flung, and in the enviable position of being able to choose what comes next.

So Switzerland rocked my boat rather than Spain, Portugal or France. It's a country that holds no past memories for me. And while I realise that of course I could be content creating a new life in a former home, my adventurous spirit clambers for change. Actually, it's more than that. It's that I have changed and in returning to old haunts I slip back into old habit patterns. Over the five weeks in Switzerland, traveling around Geneva, Nyon, Lausanne and beyond, I had stimulating conversations, improved my French, wrote, read, went to a writing conference, explored the history and, most importantly, saw growth and opportunity there for me. I felt utterly content all the time, in spite of near-constant rain, which says a lot.

London, even with its personal history, also works for me. London is where I came into my own. So even though it holds difficult memories of a frequently-absent husband and the end of a marriage, it is also a place that has great community, and now, with my acceptance to study at university, a purpose.

Another recent ah-ha! moment, whilst I was still in Switzerland: certain aspects of my past perplex me, the divorce in particular as it never occurred to me that we wouldn't do what was necessary to knit our marriage back together (is there a parallel here with my recent searches for a base? I don't think so as I believe it is possible to reconnect with people, although both parties have to want it; I see it with friendships). Anyway, I digress. I find it unhelpful to be surrounded by memories of my past. Which is why my creative writing, not this blog or my journal, from this past year has been filed. I am looking forward now, with new ideas.

I may have contradicted myself in this writing but that's just a sign of the freshness of these thoughts, the skin of the split cocoon still soft and glistening in the gentle Mediterranean light.

I still have three weeks left, though, before I reach the end of up my untethered travels. Three weeks more in Europe before I head to Toronto to meet my mother and continue on to Australia for Christmas. So I will not leap ahead of myself but remain here, alive and present, in my beautiful guest home in the hills outside the village of Puigpunyent in Mallorca, Spain.

In the morning, after the sun has finally shown its face, I fling open the door and windows to let in the light, the warmth, the birdsong. I can hear the occasional donkey braying, a rooster, the church bells in the distance. I make myself a cup of tea and watch the wind move through the olive trees below me in the valley.

Yes, this is pretty awesome.

I have such exciting news that I've been meaning to share but I get distracted by outings and events and life.

For instance, one evening I went into Nyon to practise my French by watching a film. Instead I got an eyeful of beautiful young girls, religion, torrential storms, surging rivers, trance, suicide, nudity, exorcism, many close-ups of insects and raindrops, and even a daylight meadow scene with the teenage protagonist lying naked with three nubile young men. Very little dialogue though. I suppose the French can't help themselves (although technically it was Swiss). I enjoyed it even while smiling inwardly.

And then there's the rain. I am in awe of the quantity of water that can fall from the skies. Often there is no sign of the mountains surrounding me, or the lake. Just cloud. There have been only two days in the past three weeks when it hasn't rained. And it's proper rain. I mean, not Costa Rican tropical rain, of course, but hours of steady rain, day and night, relentless. The kind usually attributed to England. Let me tell you, fifteen years in London and I have never seen such consistent rain.

A million euros!

But I don't care because I'm having such a delicious time in Switzerland with its history, markets, efficient trains, gem fairs, sweeping landscapes with dramatic clouds, chocolate, a weekend-long writing conference, even the films, and, of course, my delightful young housemate. Same age as my girls.

I haven't said much about him in my Swiss posts as it feels like an invasion of his privacy, but he's worth mentioning as we have a lovely time together when our paths cross. For example, one evening we started with how Aristophanes made playful aspersions on Plato's thoughts - he compared the gods' pontificating to a windful of farts - and moved on to Rome vs Greece (why do we have to choose sides?) and whether Jesus existed. We've discussed wine, chocolate and the challenges of queer culture in Switzerland. At one point, my housemate tied in the mega-churches of the US to the use of Christianity as a force for government, and we've also covered politics, the history of the area, schooling and of course gemmology. He did an apprenticeship and now works on the creative side in the atelier of a top jeweller in Geneva. He is a joy to be around.

I'm barrelling towards the end of my time in Switzerland, so am rushing to do all the things that I haven't quite got around to: the large marché aux puces (flea market) in Place Plainpalais in Geneva, Lausanne and its night watchman (although I believe it's a woman at the moment), Bern is a possibility but definitely Montreux with its connection to Freddy Mercury, a cog train up the mountain and Chateau Chillon on the lake. Plus, if I'm lucky, maybe a couple more decent hikes. Potentially in snow. In the mountains, it won't have been rain falling all this time.

But the point of this post, and the big news which I've finally got around to, is that I have found my what. In January I will return to do a Foundation course at Regent's University in London in Psycho-therapy, with the plan to continue onto a Masters in Psychology in September. Of course, this does involve London in January, which had never been my plan, but that's okay. Weather is irrelevant when life has purpose. 

First, though, I will fill my suitcase with chocolate and head to Mallorca for a few weeks.

The chocolate aisle at my local supermarket

 

Come for a ramble with me, along the walk I took yesterday morning. Our clocks went back Saturday night, so I was up early, ready for some physical exertion, but it ended up being an exercise in mindfulness (an oft-overused but appropriate word).

I'll begin at the end so that you understand. I was on the home-stretch of this overly-long 14 km walk, mostly past fields of grass or turnip or cows, and felt annoyed. My feet were sore and my head full of swear words. Walks were so boring, I decided. Next time, I would take a bike or a bus to somewhere I could do a proper hike. A feat with steep climbs, majestic views and a feeling of accomplishment.

This, and I gestured for my own benefit at the neat rows of espaliered apple trees nearby, the expansive slopes of green just beyond, this was just boring, repetitive agricultural terrain broken up by the occasional horse or cow, a golf course, or maybe a tree-flanked stream. With my feet hurting and home 2 kms too far away, I was sliding straight into a grumpy mindset when I stopped myself. I literally stopped myself. I stood and turned in a full circle under a sky of high clouds, and thought about what I'd done for the past three hours.

I'd started out from the small town of Crassier, spitting distance from the French-Swiss border, passing the large stone house with its green-and-white striped shutters where Suzanne Curchod had been born in 1737. The family was of modest means but her father had chosen to educate her in Latin and she showed a real aptitude for mathematics and science. So a pretty interesting young woman, particularly for that era.

At the age of twenty, she was courted by Edward Gibbon - he of the six-volume History of the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire - but paternal disapproval meant that the engagement was broken off. With the death of her parents shortly thereafter, she went to Paris to be the companion to a young French widow who at the time was being courted by an ambitious Swiss financier, Jacques Necker. He, however, turned his attention to young Suzanne and they were soon married. No mention of what the young widow thought of this turn of events.

Madame Necker's husband owed a great deal of his success to his wife's salon, where the luminaries of the day gathered to discuss art, literature and politics, and eventually he became Director-General of Finances for Louis XVI in 1776. Necker advised the king to stop wringing taxes out of his people to increase the wealth amongst the nobility and to fund the wars in the US - but we know how that ended. Fortunately, the Neckers had returned to Switzerland by the time of the French Revolution. 

Suzanne devoted considerable time, while running her famous salon, to ensure that their one child, Anne Louise Germaine, received the best education possible. Daughters often benefit when no sons are born (is that relevant to me, I wonder?) Germaine grew up to be a phenomenal intellectual as well, running her own salon first in Paris and then, after the Revolution, back in Switzerland. We should know more about Madame de Stael, as she was by then, but I won't give you the lecture now. Suffice to say that she herself was interested in Edward Gibbon, which is a little weird, almost married William Pitt the Younger, drew together the anti-slavery set and a great quote about her from the time says, "There were three great powers struggling for the soul of Europe: Napoleon, Russia and Madame de Stael."

I left the village with its rich history and continued on into the countryside, passing a long row of multi-coloured beehives, a coop of pristine white chickens with striking red combs and an open-sided barn with classical music playing for the cows being milked. It was all lovely and pastoral, early on this Sunday morning.

Or maybe quite boring, I began to think, as the agricultural fields repeated themselves beside me along the dirt road. So I took a left at the next opportunity and headed into the Jura Mountains, towards the Abbey of Bonmont. The forest was lovely - quiet and wild, a little mysterious. Eventually I arrived at the Abbey, the first in Switzerland, which also has an interesting story. It began around 500 or 600 AD when the Christians headed towards the mountains from Lyon. The way it worked was that a monk wanted the wilderness experience and moved into the Jura from the other (French) side to become a hermit. Others inevitably joined and a farming community grew which became an austere monastery. A village develops with its indentured peasants, but that becomes too cosy and someone decides to leave for the wilderness experience, goes deeper into the forest to become a hermit, others join, etc. It's like a game of leap frog.

The Abbeye de Bromont was the last frog - the next leap would have put the wilderness-seeking monk into Lake Leman (or Lake Geneva, as the English-speaking world calls it).

Yesterday morning, though, the Abbey was closed and the public path that ran alongside was shut off with construction gates. There was no way that I was going to return down the same road, so in the end I went past a "Défence d'Entrer" (no entry) sign and bushwacked through some woods until I arrived at a track that ran alongside a rather beautiful golf course (would the monks have approved?) which brought me back to the ramble along agricultural fields.

I sighed, but continued.

I decided to use my senses, to try to notice specifics. Across the lake, I could see Mount Blanc behind the first row of mountains but taller, its snowy peak lit up by sun coming through a break in the clouds. I could smell the rich loamy fields, taste the gingered chocolate I'd brought along, and hear the piercing shriek of a hawk, some cowbells and the polite greetings of the various people who passed on foot, bicycle or horse.

I stopped for a slightly longer conversation with an older man walking his dog. Was he older? Sometimes I forget my own age, and of course he was a farmer so perhaps he was just more aged than I, like a cheese, or a wine. He was insistent that he'd seen me earlier in the village of Gingins, a place I'd decided to miss as my deviation to the Abbey had added too many kilometres and I just wanted to be home. Red hair, curly, black backpack. He was sure of it. So I told him it must have been my sister.

As I came down the slopes back towards home, I passed through the hamlet of Tranchepied. This unusual name literally means foot slice or piece of foot. Supposedly, when Calvin was thundering from the pulpit in Geneva, a mere 20 kilometres away, the indentured serfs started to walk in on Sundays to listen to him. The monks did not like this so they cut a piece of the villagers' feet to hobble them. How awful is that?

It was just past Tranchepied that I had my little strop, which made me reflect on everything I had seen and thought of - the history, the trees, the wild cyclamen, the donkeys, a particularly hairy horse and the cow bells, the majesty of the mountains and the green of the fields.

It was a real lesson in being present. Perhaps I hadn't had the excitement of climbing 500 metres up to a summit or the blissful meanderings on a winding path through a forest. But look at what I had had! The kind of history that exists where political civilisation has unfolded dramatically for millennia (although the hobbling of serfs might not be considered civilised).

It's rich and deep and interesting, and there is always something awe-inspiring to find in even the smallest patch of ground or the vast expanse of repetitive fields. 

My grumblings brought me up short, reminded me of all that I had noticed during my walk. So I'm glad they did, but maybe next time I'll skip the whinge.

 

I opted for a month in Switzerland and then a month in Mallorca to develop (or redevelop) a writing practice. And in spite of a dash to London for a couple of days, and a stint of cat-sitting in an Alpine village where it turns out I am still allergic to cats, it has been successful. Not a huge amount of writing per se but a great deal of thinking and consideration and exploration has happened on my long hikes, which is all part of the creative process.

"This thoughtfulness is leading to some wise decisions. Writing out the past is not actually healing. Writing the future is."

These wise words were given to me from a good friend after I sent her a long rant several days ago. Both of the pieces I have been working on concern my past, even though written in a non-memoir way: A woman in a remote location suffering post-partum depression without knowing it, pushing against a reality that isn't hers, feeling 'othered' by a workaholic partner, and being an utterly unreliable narrator through a series of heart-breaking events.

Where have we seen this before?

I had considered this to be a beneficial exorcising of demons, a clarification even if in reality I didn't go through such drama. But I could have. In my similar situation, I might not have realised there was an element of gas-lighting happening, I could have reacted in irrational ways. Sometimes I did.

I still think the writing is good, the premise sound, but it's killing me. So no more. Now is the time to work on the present and the future, and that will be a book about this untethered year of mine. Also told as fiction - I work best in a world of emotional possibility - but relevant to who I am today, with ideas of how I want to be tomorrow.

The chalet where I currently live is lovely. In fact, the whole village is charming and feels Swiss rather than French, even though I could walk to France from here, it's only a few kilometres. And while they're not the same, they do share the unfortunate habit of standoffishness, needing to know you for at least five years before they will invite you into their homes. However, I hear rumour that there are oodles of intelligent and worldly people from other countries living in the area due to all the governmental agencies and global organisations based in and around Geneva.

But they're over there, and I'm over here. My peripatetic lifestyle doesn't make it easy to connect. And while I admire and enjoy the different accents and abilities of all the international people, I am still reluctant to speak my more-than-adequate French. Why am I so hard on myself?

After a glorious 13 kilometre hike in sunshine on Sunday, the clouds rolled in and we're on day three of a steady downpour. It reflects my mood. So apologies if this post is a bit blah, but this blog was never going to be all ecstatic moments and grand realisations.

Outside the many wood-framed windows, though, I see leaves twitching in the wind, a large Swiss flag in the neighbour's garden, green ferns against a mossy wall. It is picturesque. The boulangerie has good bread. People say 'bonjour' and 'merci' as they get on and off buses, when they pass on the street.

I read all of one book yesterday, and big chunks of three others. That was worthwhile. And I appreciate the time, the stillness and yes, even the rain, that allows me to settle in and do just that. From this evening, though, I head into a bout of movie-watching, with three films planned over the next six days: two in English and one in French. I always find that films inspire me creatively.

Bee Hives

I just let the chickens out into the garden of my latest abode here in Crassier, Switzerland.

These are words I take great pleasure in writing - I mean, chickens?

Deep into my fourteenth month of this untethered life, I am amazed and grateful and slightly awestruck.

I've been in Switzerland just over 48 hours and it's been busy, starting with a pick-up at Geneva airport on Tuesday evening by a good friend from my Costa Rican days. One of the joys of this floating year is choosing to place myself near distant friends, creating the opportunity to deepen friendships.

Along with the chickens, I have a resident housemate who is the son of the friend's friend's friend who offered me this lovely place to stay while she and her husband are in Australia for several months. As we ate the delicious local dish that Ben had specially prepared for the night of my arrival, the conversation meandered from local cuisine to local activities by way of Ovid, Constantine, ancient philosophers, wine-making, the Bible and numerous other subjects that have been lost in the pleasant glow from that evening.

Stimulating, enlightening, engaging and just plain fun. I may never leave.

The next day, following a morning of unpacking and positioning my computer on an unvarnished slab of wood by a window overlooking the garden, I was picked up by Lydia. You may remember that we crossed paths last June in Waterloo station, serendipity in every sense, thirty years after we last saw each other in Costa Rica. We pootled around nearby Nyon, my go-to place for shopping and trains, where I learned the essential places, saw the beautiful ceramics she makes in her studio and had a delicious lunch. On the way back to my village, I did a grocery shop (expensive!) while she bought rope for a swing she'd spontaneously purchased the other week. I love her creativity.

Last evening, the sun just disappearing behind the Jura mountains, I had an extraordinary moment as I settled into sleeping pigeon pose, my forehead resting lightly on my hands, while around me fourteen men and women did the same. It was like a camera shot that started with me, on a yoga mat, and then zoomed out to include the others, then the community hall, the village, and the area, and farther out until it was Switzerland, Europe and backwards even more until the whole globe was spinning in front of me.

I was awed.

Until it shattered with an unexpected act of kindness. Hinde, the yoga instructor, was moving between us, laying a hand here or gently pressing someone deeper into a pose, and at that moment she whispered in my ear, "est-ce que je peux vous toucher?"

Suddenly, I felt so alone that I wanted to weep. 

Never mind the idea of being in a yoga studio amongst people I knew or saw regularly, people I crossed paths with in the street, recognised in a café or ran into at a book launch. The simple laying-on of hands by Hinde made me yearn for physical touch, for intimacy, for affection. 

That was just a blink, though, within an hour of contentment. My walk home, along the dark (but sensibly lit) street, the Jura looming indefinably to my right with twinkling stars above, filled me again with awe and an ease at where I am now, what I'm doing, who I am.

Less than two weeks ago I finished the Portuguese Camino with a sense of satisfaction and joy. But this whole untethered experience is also a pilgrimage of sorts. It's a search for purpose and community, and I am on a track now. By keeping my mind and heart open, continuing to put one foot in front of the other without looking too far into the distant future, amazing things happen. Look at those chickens in the garden, the mountains beyond the fence line. I could never have foreseen this but how extraordinary that it has come to pass.

"I don't know where I'm going but I know how to get there."

Boyd Varty, The Lion Tracker's Guide to Life