A new walk
3 comments February 25th, 2010
Oh, I’m so excited!
This post is a combination of a promise I made to a reader a while ago and have yet felt able to fulfil; and also by way of sharing the excitement of new ideas.
Some weeks ago, I received this email from Melissa Layton after she finished reading Sahara (here in part)
What I really wanted to read about, however, was how you fitted back into life after the trek. How you felt and feel now. I’m sure others would also be interested in reading about that as well. I’m sure that the trek completely changed who you are and made you interact with the world in a different way. Perhaps that internal change is still happening. Anyway, it would be interesting to read about if you would like to write about it.
I promised her a response and asked her permission to put the email on here, as I am frequently asked the same question.
It is one I have had great difficulty in answering; not least because sometimes it has had me close to tears!
Coming back was far harder than I ever thought it would be. After the initial rush of relief that I could eat what I wanted, sleep when I wanted, and get my body well again, other things began to creep in.
It became clear after a couple of months that my walk would not continue that October as I had planned. This was devastating; I didn’t want to start writing Sahara because I felt that if I did, I would somehow curse myself and not be able to finish – and yet I wanted very much to describe how it was out there. I came home to the launch of ‘Slow Journey South’, and yet it felt like a lifetime ago. I was doing interviews about a journey that was long over, not to mention a marriage that was long over. I didn’t enjoy that experience a great deal.
My father became terminally ill only weeks after I came home, and I spent the following Christmas in the UK with him. He died the following January; it was awful for all of us, and particularly for his wonderful wife, Ela, who did not get the time with him they so deserved to enjoy together.
I came back to Australia and moved into my partner (Graeme)’s house. Suddenly I had two teenage children, Graeme’s mother, two dogs and a whole new life to contend with. With the best will in the world, I reckon the Sahara was easier!
I settled in to write the book, and found it dreadfully difficult. Slow Journey South had rolled onto the page effortlessly. The start of Sahara really dragged, for me; I hated – and I really do mean hated – writing about my marriage break up. It was traumatic, embarassing, worrying, and just plain hard work to do. It was also very tough walking out of the study and coming downstairs to a life where nobody knew how it had been, except Graeme to some degree; I talked about the walk very little (outside of media) when I got back, and so not many people had much understanding of what I had really been doing for the last couple of years.
I also hadn’t really lived in Australia for nearly 8 years. I had few close friends, and those I fell back in with, had not been at all close to the walk. Sometimes it felt as if the whole thing had never happened, had been some kind of bizarre dream.
I had a lot of bad dreams. Graeme, who has done some pretty hairy adventuring in his time, told me more than once that he thought I was suffering a bit of post traumatic style fall out. Of course, I was dreadfully disparaging about such comments, and promptly told him I thought that all of that was a load of old bollocks (as I sucked heavily on another bottle of red).
But there was no getting around some of the stranger, and funnier things: I spent months falling out of bed in the middle of the night, being used to sleeping on the ground; Graeme woke up more than once with me poised over the top of him with an imaginary knife in hand, certain he was a bandit come to steal my camels; and I frequently had a weird, repetitive dream that simply involved terror, and flames.
It was only when I finally wrote my book that I realised that dream was about when I was unconscious, and sick. In all that time – over a year by that point since the walk – I had never remembered that time. I’d been asked so often when it was that I was most afraid, and found the question impossible to answer – I usually said that I wasn’t really. The real answer is that it was then. When I was sick. I have never been so terrified in my life.
But there were other things that were strange, and sometimes sad. I would walk down a city street and see a woman who I knew, from her features and dress, was from one of the cultures I had walked through. I would feel a rush of recognition, and smile in anticipation, ready to greet as I would in the desert; only to find her turning away hastily from my approach, probably wondering who the weird white woman was – but for different reasons than before! I felt alienated from both cultures – my own, and the ones that had welcomed me so kindly.
In the meantime, I was trying to work out how to financially survive. I discovered that teaching wasn’t an option anymore without further training. I began doing some speaking work; but I found (and still find) it hard to self promote. I love the talking aspect, it is the sales pitch I struggle with! And above all, I began to recognize that the Sahara simply may not ever be a real option for return.
My life was on hold, and I got pretty down. I wondered what to do with this website, what to do if I had no walk, what the hell to do in general.
I finished writing Sahara in September 2008, and went to Broome straight away. I needed to clear my head, and I had got into my mind that if I wasn’t walking with camels in Africa, then I could certainly do it here instead – something I had thought of often out in the Big Empty.
But several months later, I began to realise that something was missing for me with this walk; something didn’t really feel right.
Last year (as I have heard it was for a lot of people!) was a serious low point. I found it hard to feel enthusiastic about the book coming out – I was terrified that people would judge me harshly, or that I had not described the walk well enough. There was so much that I had to leave out of the book for sheer want of space, and in a journey which felt like every single day was a huge adventure, it seemed impossible to convey the whole.
In many ways, I felt that if I let go of the Saharan walk, that I was giving up on everything I had fought for. Any other project seemed a real waste of time; all I wanted, I told myself, was my ending, the point when I KNEW the walk was really over, and could get on with life.
It had been so long since I finished the book until it came out, that I had stopped talking about it much at all. As I said, for a lot of people – even those close to me – the walk was something I finished ages ago; not something that still lived, breathed, and me up inside. By the time Sahara was released, my confidence was at rock bottom, and I really doubted that anybody would be very interested.
I can’t tell you what a difference the book has made. For the first time, friends I haven’t heard from in years have phoned up, and laughed when they told me it was just like sitting in the pub and hearing me talk. People I am close to finally understand how it was for me out there, and that is just the most enormous relief. Every email I get from readers raises my spirits a bit more; every affirmation that the book is interesting boosts me up and encourages me to think forwards.
So, as to how do I feel now? Well – right now, I feel better than I ever have since the walk finished. I live half my time at Graeme’s and half up at my home town of Mansfield, which I completely love. Graeme is completely supportive of anything (or any mad idea) I get in my head, and so I feel free to dream and scheme.
Right now, that dreaming has led me to begin researching and planning a walk along the Appalachian Trail in America. I have heard about it often, and more than anything, I just want a simple walk that helps to clear the cobwebs away. I don’t want a massive expedition, just a well planned, physically challenging, socially interesting walk that I can enjoy, and write about. the trail including the Canadian section (IAP) runs just under 3000 miles, so it offers plenty of time for navel gazing, my favourite occupation. I don’t want to stick my neck right out and say: yep, this is definitely what I will be doing next March; but right now, I feel pretty good about it. I will keep you posted.
In the meantime, I am planning on working back at Mt Buller during the ski season, mainly because my stepdaughter Chloe will never forgive me if I don’t get her free tickets to snowboard. Oh, I should have added that – the kids have been one of the greatest joys about living back here. Even if they do think I am barmy.
I finally feel as if things are beginning to take shape again, after what has felt a long time in the wilderness. I just finished reading the audio version of Sahara out loud; it was far, far harder than I thought it would be, and to my utter mortification, more than once I had to leave the little recording room for a breath of fresh air when the emotion got to me. I think it may well be the most cathartic thing I have done, and the reason I am feeling so light and unburdened. Somehow reading it was far more powerful than writing it, and in doing so, I think I put a lot of demons to rest. If you ever listen to it, do forgive me on the last page. It took me about ten goes to get through those paragraphs. I’d never been able to read it since I wrote it, and it was bloody hard reading it out loud.
So, after beginning my research, I came across this guy: Ray Jardine. And became kind of obsessed! I wish to hell I had stumbled across him before I set out from Trafalgar Square. Without rabbiting on, he pioneered a system of trekking ‘ultralight’ – hiking with incredibly light, efficient equipment, that he has designed himself. I am taking his approach right on board, and plan to use all his gear on the AT – which, incidentally, he is walking again (for the third or so time) next month.
I have that rolling feeling I get when ideas begin to really come together, and make me excited.
So I guess that – today, anyway – when you ask me how I am feeling, I would say: fantastic. And if you asked me what the next book will be, I would say: about nutty Yanks on the Appalachian Trail (please please don’t send me hate mail, lovely American folk, it is a bad Australian joke).
And in the meantime – thankyou, every single person, who has bothered to write or talk to me about Sahara, and how you enjoyed it. It means so very much to me.
Cheers.