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

Scallop shells - the symbol of the Camino

My arrival into Santiago de Compostela this past Saturday gave me such a feeling of completion. The place was teeming with people, which was overwhelming and disconcerting at first after the peace of the countryside, but we soon settled into this magnificent town with its narrow winding streets filled with colonnades, fountains and history.

The sight of the present day cathedral, begun in 1087, filled me with awe. The Romanesque building, tinged with Gothic elements and some Baroque features, is enormous and elaborately decorated inside. The stories it holds and the events it has witnessed seem to be captured in its very stonework.

The evening of our arrival we had our version of a last supper, but without the water-into-wine or the betrayal. As always, on the menu were mussels, squid, octopus, fish and razor clams, all liberally sprinkled with olive oil and pimentón (paprika). For the record, not a morsel of octopus passed my lips on this whole trip in spite of it being on offer everywhere. Yes, it is delicious, but I'm sure your dog or cat would be too, given how well you look after them. Octopuses are too intelligent to be eaten, and I worry that our intense consumption will add them to the list of species we are eating to extinction (a list which includes sharks, pangolins, eels, beluga sturgeon, gorillas and the Yangtze soft shell turtles which are down to four individuals).

As the group dispersed into the warm evening, four of us headed out to look for a Quemada, a Galician alcoholic drink made with aguardiente and infused with lemon, coffee beans, sugar and cinnamon. Traditionally, it is served in a pumpkin but ours came in a shallow, three-legged clay pot. Our young waitress began by reciting an incantation as she lit the brew on fire and then stirred it for a long time, raising the ladle and pouring the flaming blue liquid back into the pot, continuing to recite the spell to confer special powers to the Quemada which would then be transferred to those drinking it. 

We sipped the warm brew in tiny clay cups and retold stories of our time together. Around us, in the small slanted square (from the steep street rather than the aguardiente of the Quemada) people were also sharing and laughing in the surprisingly hot evening on this last day of September.

We ended our magical arrival day into Santiago de Compostela in the central plaza, with a just-past full moon rising over the towers and roofline of the cathedral. Behind us, in the colonnade of an old building, a folk group in full costume danced and played their old Galician instruments. Tuna music, as it is called, is a tradition dating back as far as the 13th century, and used to involve groups of needy university students singing, accompanied by traditional instruments, in order to earn money to pay for their studies.

I feel blessed, literally blessed, by the experience of the Camino and then the arrival into such a magnificent place.

I didn't have any major epiphanies on the Camino but found that the rhythm, routine and mixture of both solitary and social time gave me the opportunity to think through many of the realisations that I have had on this year-long untethered road. 

I noticed random dips in self-confidence, which I attributed to my inability to engage conversationally with other pilgrims along the way. Disinterest could be a better way of putting it, as this wasn't why I was doing the Camino. I likened the daily route to a cocktail party, where one never gets past the "I'm from wherever, and I do this, and have x-number of children". That's not to say that I didn't have some good chats with a few people, but these were rare, and anyway, I had five dynamic and interesting women to hang with when I wanted. The awkwardness diminished as I relaxed and realised I could just be me. I don't need to compare myself to others, my disinterest in mundane conversation is just who I am. It doesn't make me better or worse than those who can light up a room or engage a table of twenty in their stories. I am who I am. I've been called intense, but there are worse names in the book!

I was interviewed by a radio station the morning after our arrival into Santiago, while eating breakfast of all things. It was mostly about what we had ordered but touched a bit on my background, particularly why a Canadian spoke such fluent Spanish. I was eating Tarta de Santiago, a delicious cake made only of ground almonds, sugar and eggs, with my tea and juice. I don't usually have cake for breakfast, but when on holiday...

It was fascinating visiting the tomb of St. James before heading off to find breakfast (and get interviewed). This is the resting place of one of Jesus' disciples and the tomb was left undisturbed when the town was razed to the ground in 997 by Abū Amir al-Mansūr, military commander of the Moorish caliphate of Córdoba. The cathedral is one of only three churches built over the remains of disciples, the others being St. Thomas' in Chennai, India and, of course, St. Peter's in Rome. 

I feel like a million bucks now, full of energy and excitement. As if my hopes and ideas and anticipation for what comes next is a massive basket, about to overflow. I don't think I've ever felt this high on life before - which says a lot as these past few months I have had numerous moments of joy and contentment.

The question now is what to do with all this potential, where to direct it. The plan starts with a week here in London. I arrived yesterday afternoon into a teeming Gatwick airport to find grey skies, a non-functioning Victoria line and that polite British formality of crowded trains. My days will be mostly writing or walking or exploring cultural opportunities, and my evenings socialising. After that, a month in Switzerland, in a French-speaking area that I know nothing about but where I have three, even four, sets of nearby friends. Exploration on all levels, hanging on a structure of regular writing. What do I have in me? What stories would like to be told? And is it books, or screenplays, or short stories, or punchy anecdotes which don't fit a genre?

Time will tell, as it so often does.