Each of us will deal in the course of our lives with despair. The death of a loved one, a broken relationship, the collapse of a family business - the emotional fallout from such an event can extend for months, even years. Sometimes, the loss is life-altering. One tactic in coping with a major loss involves walling it off and moving on. Formal counseling may provide the means to cope and to recover. The comfort found in the company of close friends may progressively ease the pain.
"The Salt Path," a remarkable memoir by Raynor Winn, describes a totally different means for dealing with emotional and physical catastrophe.
Raynor and her husband, Moth, had spent years restoring a Welsh farm that would become their home and their principal source of income. A bad investment, mediated by a friend, led to forfeiture of their property after an exhausting, three-year battle in the courts. A day later, the couple learned from a neurologist that Moth suffered from cortico-basal degeneration (CBD), a rare, progressive disease. For months, Moth had experienced worsening pain and weakness in his right shoulder and arm, followed by a tremor in his hand.
CBD often attacks one extremity before involving the others. Pain, stiffness, and clumsiness in the affected limbs are typical. Later in the course of illness, behavior and cognition deteriorate. Decline may extend over years.
The couple, in their fifties, could have surrendered, retiring to government housing and subsisting on a disability pension. Their two children were secure in their universities. Free-spirits in their younger years, Raynor and Moth decided to embark on a hike of the 630-mile long Southwest Coast Walk, a rugged course noted for its steep hills and perilous declines.
Take a walk
Learn more about the Southwest at southwestcoastpath.org.uk.
They set out in an unusually warm August with a used tent, sleeping bags, mats, tiny gas stove, a cup, plate and pan. They had the equivalent of $180. Each week they would receive a tax-credit payment of $72.
Their guidebook laid out an ambitious schedule. Where the writer covered 12 miles in a day, they struggled to walk five miles. Packets of dried noodles and cans of tuna were their diet mainstays. At the end of a day, they would dunk a teabag into a cup of hot water provided at a pub. A rare beer or pastry represented a feast.
Wherever they found a patch of land, whether in a churchyard, golf course or farm, they set up their tent. One early morning, Raynor emerged from her sleeping bag to investigate rainfall, only to find a large dog urinating on the tent.
Sometimes heavy rains or high winds made walking and camping difficult. The couple used rivers and streams and sometimes the ocean to wash their increasingly threadbare clothes.
In towns in villages along the way, the couple sometimes endured sharp rebukes for being homeless. More often, the generosity of strangers rescued them when their provisions were exhausted.
The rigors of daily hill climbs and long walks along beaches slowly improved Moth's strength and endurance.
Winter brought a halt to their hike near the halfway point. A friend gave them free shelter in a small, unfinished outbuilding in exchange for Moth hanging drywall. As spring and sheep-shearing season arrived, Raynor worked for six weeks with a team of shearers as they moved from farm to farm. Earnings from that work financed warmer sleeping bags and more secure provisions for the second half of their hike.
They resumed their hike, starting from the eastern end and walking to the terminus of the previous year.
At journey's end, a stronger Moth enrolled in college courses. The couple anticipated a renewed life.
Raynor reflects: "Our journey had drained us of every emotion, sapped our strength, and our will. But then, like the windblown trees along our route, we had been re-formed by the elements into a new shape that would ride out whatever storms came over the bright new sea."
Clif CleavelandContact Clif Cleaveland at ccleaveland@timesfreepress.com.