kissing gates & stiles

4 July, steady rain, somewhere in the middling section of the country

Last March, two days after my friend Jane was removed from life support, I had a significant birthday. Seemed like this was the summer for a big adventure, time to carpe the damn diem. So I walked across England along Hadrian’s Wall with my pal Carita. It was part literary pilgrimage—think Rosemary Sutcliff—and part why-the-hell-not.

Eight days of walking, fifteen-ish miles a day, often closer to twenty, bloody feet, sweeping views, cows, sheep, and good thinking and talking time. And more cows and sheep.

So many cows and sheep.

Fast forward.

It’s Labor Day weekend. We’ve survived the first week of classes. And although it’s unusually warm for us, the light and air are taking on that thin quality.

Since I’ve hardly moved since I’ve been back, and I’ve eaten All The Things, I decided to go for a quick, easy run this morning. I fired up a running app I haven’t used for years, because the tunes remind me of a very dark time, heartbreak and depression. But it’s a convenient way to ease back into movement after six weeks of lazy. And my tech is so old it’s obsolete, so this was the easiest option.

I had sort of girded myself against any woe that I felt sure might burble up, hearing that music. But still, I was surprised that instead of that sick feeling of despair I’d often felt, in stores, or wherever I might have happened to hear those tunes in the last few years, today, when I heard the opening measures of the first song on the playlist, I smiled. Not the kind of smile you manufacture, but the kind of smile that happens to you.

A few blocks later, on to the next tune, I passed a blue house. Out front a car was wide open, and a woman and a tiny girl were loading suitcases into the back. I felt a queer sense of deja vu, and then realized I’d witnessed a scene here a year ago. Presumably that same happy girl today was the toddler who, a year ago, was screaming her little head off in the doorway, held by that same woman. A dad-looking man was loading suitcases then, and a teenager was getting into the vehicle, waving and saying comforting things to screamer.

I’d forgotten that incident, what I’d imagined at the time was a going-to-college goodbye, siblings, maybe. Funny how memory works, the forgetting and small shifts that swing our minds back to a different time.

Slogging along this morning, listening to Fleet Foxes and Blitzen Trapper and Iron & Wine, I kept thinking about all those kissing gates and stiles back in England, especially the stiles, how hard it was by the end of the day to hoist myself sore, stiff body over, how absurd it seemed to separate sheep from identical looking sheep. Although, the stone walls did break up the monotony of the landscape, sure, and helped to measure out the day’s walk.

In fact, all week memories from the trip have been surfacing in my mind, and they seem more fresh than they did a month ago, when I returned.

For instance! The old codger in charge of breakfast at the inn in Hexham sang every morning, “...leaving ON a jet plane, don’t know when I’LL be back again, dee-dee-dee…!” He had such an aggressively northern accent, I could only understand maybe a third of what he said. And he had a lot to say. One morning, after he clarified my egg order, he said something I could only half understand, “Ye die if ye *mutter* *mutter*, ye die if ye don’t *mutter* *mutter*, ye die anyway! That’s my philosophy, anyway!” Then he went singing back into the kitchen. I liked his cheerful flavor of misery.

And, I keep remembering our arrival at the terminus of the Wall. (Or the beginning, depending.) I’d had a hitch in my giddy-yup that day, pain starting in my big toe and then radiating up my leg, until the last mile was absolute misery, each step an act of will.

Bowness-on-Solway

On arrival at the tiny Bowness-on-Solway, I was climbing a hill into town and saw three fellas looking like they’d also just finished the walk. Even from a distance they seemed obviously American. As I approached, I saw that one was wearing a Portland Marathon shirt. Asked which Portland.

“Oregon. Where are you from?”

I started to say “near Seattle,” because that had been my standard answer here all week, then corrected myself. “Tacoma!”

One of the others piped up, “I live in Gig Harbor.”

“And I’m from Lacey.”

I’d walked eighty-odd miles in a country thousands of miles from home only to meet my actual neighbors upon arrival. It was what I like to call a Joseph-fucking-Campbell moment.

So here we go again. Over the stile, into a new field, another school year, trudging along, minding the feces, the old wounds healed, and ready to ruin ourselves again for love, this time with a new soundtrack, maybe.

And what a privilege.