In the Beginning - Hiking England's Coast to Coast Way: Landscape, Laughter and Love - page 3

my early married life, the long trip of two decades ago, but much, most, perhaps all that
had happened since, not to mention a freckling of the lives of those who had gone before.
Over twenty years ago, our neighbors, cheerful, cash-strapped teachers, had spent their
summer walking The Pennine Way. This is an even longer walk than the Coast to Coast,
sinuating up the spine of Britain, then stretching on across the Cheviot Hills and into Scot-
land. There is little romance about The Pennine Way; it is not satisfactorily cradled by the
sea, nor does it confront many mountains, or long stretches of spectacular scenery, but to
the persistent walker it has its appeal. Its draw has much to do with the timeless invitation
to become engaged, to be involved with the minutiae of life in industrial hamlet, slant-
ing heath, alien listening station, and with the welcoming old woman who served tea and
scones in her Garrigill front room.
I remember there was something magnetic about Jan and Gordon's stories of the long
trudge through bogs and across wind-lashed moors—something that claimed us, something
elemental, possibly perverse. For a while we were seduced into stripping our lives to what
could be carried in a backpack and propelled by our own strength and will. Inevitably one
July, after three weeks of rugged rain, we set out on The Pennine Way. It was indeed a long
slog through bilious bogs and across wind-groined moors. And yet, I began again to grasp
the lure of long-distance walking. It is about getting there, but it is not only about getting
there; we rediscovered the truism that the journey is as important as the destination. Long
distance walking is a lot like chasing butterflies, shedding the chrysalis of humdrum cares,
taking flight, crash landing and mending broken wings. It's odd now to picture us as skip-
ping around with insect nets and etymological reference topics, when in reality we plodded
in hiking boots and raingear through the mists and gloom, but we were making new dis-
coveries, some of them about how the physical, the emotional and the spiritual aspects of
our lives are intertwined. There are new rhythms to the hiking life, one foot in front of an-
other, one foot in front of another, left, then right, left then right, and the larger rhythm of
eat, sleep, walk, eat, sleep, walk. Paring of life peels to its core, we walked in step with the
world's heartbeat, the rise and roll of the tide, the crescent and crest of the moon, the spurt
and sigh of creation. In the midst of these eternal, mesmeric rhythms, my mountaintop ex-
perience broke through.
In the second week of walking, the wind and the rain finally abated, and sunbeams sported
across a watery, blue sky. We had walked to a lighter beat that day, and all afternoon had
climbed a long, slowly rising, incline. Of a sudden, the land fell away before us. We were
at the head of a deep- scooped U-shaped valley, the land curving away and stretching out to
Scotland in the far distance. It was like a beautiful, patchwork tablecloth, offering possib-
ilities served up like dishes at dinner! There was nothing I couldn't be; it was in my grasp,