coronavirus Archives - Nadine Walks

The Beginning of Something (a new season)

September 8, 2020

Summer is winding down, ending, already over. How? Is it stranger this year because of COVID, and the feeling like we might still be at the end of winter, early March, and that these last 6 months have all been some sort of a dream? It feels that way, like these last two warm seasons were just a tease, and that real life stopped in March, and that when we wake up we’ll be back there, still wearing puffy coats and sweaters, still waiting for the first signs of spring.

My summer was… okay. It was good, it was long, it was short, it was so hot and humid, I was restless, I was settled, I was anxious, I was joyful. The times when I felt settled were usually when I was driving on a long and empty road, or standing by an ocean. Nearly all the rest of the time it felt like I was waiting: waiting for the day to finish, waiting to move into the next week, the next month, waiting for this virus to be “solved” and to be in a place where I could move ahead with life.

This is not generally the way I want to live, and it certainly wasn’t the way I wanted to spend my summer, but I keep repeating to myself: “We’re in a pandemic. This is still a crisis. It’s okay that the summer wasn’t all it could be. There was no way the summer could have been what you expected.”

And now we’re heading into a new season and the large questions of this time still remain. How long will we continue to be in this? Will I feel unsafe working from my school? Will I be able to manage all of the work that I’m facing this year? What happens when the weather turns cold, when I can’t see people outdoors? What happens in November, who will be elected president? How will that have an effect on the state of my country?

It often feels like a little too much and I can get trapped here, trapped with the questioning and the wishing that time could speed up, that I could arrive at a point where it is safe to get on a plane and travel to a new place and go on a long walk.

Instead, I’m here, home, on my couch and on my porch. Soon I’ll be back in a school and even though I had a long break from work, it almost feels as though there was no real break at all.

I think and think about what I can do to quiet the questions and the restlessness, and the answers are what they always are: Walk. Write. Repeat and repeat.

My writing has gone in slow waves this summer, from nonexistent to small things to occasionally a big burst of something. But then there are the ideas, too, the ideas of new things to write and new things to share and when I start working on an idea, it feels really good. It’s enough to even make me forget that there is a pandemic swirling around, and I can sink into the excitement of something new, even if it’s just the words I’m putting on a page.

I’ve been working on some essays, maybe you could call them pieces of long-form travel writing. Whatever they’re called, they’ve been fun to work on, and I have nearly a dozen ideas of what to write about. They are stories and lessons from the last 6 years (or, the last 20 years, if you go all the way back to my college year abroad). Initially I thought that I might try to put the essays into an e-book, and for the last year have been coming back to that idea (when I’m not trying to finish writing the Camino Book).

But a few weeks ago I had another thought, and this one feels good. Nearly two years ago I started a Patreon, and have occasionally posted short ramblings and photos, but I’ve always intended to do more. The support that I’m getting there has been phenomenal and has meant so much to me, especially because my patrons aren’t getting much directly from the site- no real bonuses or perks. They’re supporting the work I’ve already done, and whether the know it or not, are giving me a tremendous amount of encouragement to keep chipping away.

But then it occurred to me- Patreon would be the perfect place to publish these essays I’ve been working on/dreaming up! I always worried that posting regularly to Patreon would take away from what I would share on this blog, and would also take away from the precious time I have to work on my book. And those concerns are legitimate, but I think an essay a month is more than do-able. It will keep my writing muscles strong, it will motivate me to write out some of the stories I’ve been meaning to share, and it will give those stories a place.

To have access to the stories, readers will need to sign up to be a patron (it’s easy and I’ve included several levels from as little as $1 or $3 a month), and patrons can cancel at any time. To give you a little taste, I’m making September’s essay public for the rest of the month (which means you can read without signing up to be a patron). It’s a slightly altered excerpt from the book I’m working on about my first Camino, and this section includes my arrival in Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port and what it was like to face the beginning of a 500-mile long walk.

So go check that out, even if you don’t intend or can’t afford to be my patron- I’d love for you to read some of my work in progress!

It feels good to be writing, and to give myself accountability in this way. It’s nerve-wracking and a little scary, too (publishing/posting anything I write always is), but that’s not a bad thing. And in these months, I need something to focus on, something that moves me forward, something to anchor me while the rest of the world swirls and rages.

And, otherwise, I’m going to walk. There’s nothing big planned- how can there be?- and while I wish I could be chronicling a grand adventure, instead I need to focus on what’s around me. The same walks I always do, but also exploring the parks and trails a little further afield. Finding joy and adventure in these smaller journeys is something I’ve been trying to work on in these last 6 months, and I’m slowly getting better at it. I can’t wait to be back on a long-distance path somewhere out in the greater world, but in the meantime, I’ll continue to look for the beauty in my own backyard. Walking, any way you do it, however you do it, is good.

So that’s the update for the moment: new writing on Patreon, and stretching my legs wherever I can. Mourning, a bit, the end of summer, but keeping an open mind as to what this next season might bring.

And then it all went up in flames

June 27, 2020

I just returned home from a 2-day backpacking trip that was supposed to be a 9-day trip, though to be fair, I always knew that I might have to cut the trip short. I’m new to backpacking, and I like camping well enough but I don’t exactly love it. I’m nervous about animals at night and I don’t like being dirty and when I’m on vacation, I really like a glass of wine or a beer at the end of the day. On a Camino, you can sleep inside and take a shower and have a hot meal and an entire bottle of wine. All reasons I really like the Camino. So nine days for someone who’s never backpacked before was ambitious.

But, you know, I thought I could do it. If not for the coronavirus, I would be walking through Portugal right now; I’d planned 40-days of walking this summer, more than I ever have before, and I was excited for it. Walking long-distance paths has become such a big part of my life, ever since I walked that first Camino in 2014. What’s a year without a long walk? COVID has demanded this question, and I didn’t want to accept its answer. I felt restless, my legs itching to go: to go somewhere, to go anywhere. Could I find a long walk a little closer to home?

The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Towpath (the C&O) runs for 184.5 miles from Washington DC to Cumberland, MD. It’s a mostly flat path and often used by bikers and day hikers, but there are some backpackers who hike the entire trail. With enough free campsites, water pumps and several towns close to the path, I thought it would be an ideal first backpacking experience. And in many ways, it is.

I threw my gear into my pack: a tent and sleeping bag and sleeping pad, a camp stove and a bag full of food and a water filter. I booked a hotel room halfway through the journey, in a town with a post office where I could ship a resupply box full of more food. If all went well, I’d walk for nine days, camping most nights.

I set out early, at dawn, driving to the my starting point, stowing my car, finding the start of the trail. The sun was shining and the air was fresh, my pack was heavy but my legs were eager. I was back on a long path! Nothing to do all day but walk and walk!

After about 3 miles, I realized how much weight I was carrying on my back. I could start to feel an ache in my shoulders and around my hips. My feet were starting to hurt a bit, too. I walked a few more miles, stopped for a short rest. A few more miles, stopped for lunch. I was 9-miles into the walk and starting to get worried. I’d planned for a first day of 22-miles (I know, I know), and the next day I was due to walk 23, the day after that, at least 25.

I’d intended to start a little slower, but poor planning involving picking up my resupply box from the post office meant I had to do big miles (note to self: in the future, don’t time a resupply for the weekend). But I thought I could do it, because hadn’t I walked 20-miles a day before? On the Camino, I do it all the time!

But here’s the thing. When I was planning this little adventure, I was imagining myself on my strongest Camino days. After 3 weeks of walking when my body had adapted to the path and my legs were strong and my shoulders could bear the weight of what I carried. Those were the days I recalled, the days when I felt strong and unstoppable. And there were days on the Camino, or on a hike in England, when I pushed myself hard, when I struggled but kept going. And these are also the kind of days that stick in my mind, proof that I can push myself hard, that I can keep going through some pain, that I can endure.

Well, maybe ‘endure’ should be the word of the last two days. There I was, on the C&O, putting one foot in front of the other, pain radiating through my body. “Have I ever hurt this much on a walk before?” I asked myself. I felt it everywhere: my shoulders and lower back and hips and thighs and feet and even in my ankles. My ankles hurt! I realized that I should have been more careful in my packing, that I probably should have done a few training hikes wearing my pack. Why did I think I could walk 20+ mile days with 30 pounds on my back like it was no big deal?

I made it to 15-miles. I stopped, I rested my feet. “4 more miles,” I told myself. “Then you can stop.” As I walked I came up with a new plan, one where I would shorten my next few days, and then take a bus or an Uber to the next town where I could pick up my resupply box.

After 19.5 miles I made it to a campsite and I sat on a bench and didn’t move for awhile. Slowly, hobbling, I set up my tent and washed my socks and changed out of my sweaty clothes. Two people on bikes road up, and set up camp at the opposite end of the site.

I took out dinner supplies, figuring I could eat and then crawl into my tent and have an early night, that maybe sleep would soothe my muscles.

I have this little camp stove that is nifty and neat and so easy to use. It heats up water in under 2-minutes and I’ve had it for several years, used it a few dozen times.

But this time? I was using a new fuel canister so that must have been it, maybe there was a leak, there must have been a leak, because something went terribly wrong and my stove went up in flames.

I keep thinking of that expression- “burst into flames”. That’s what happened. One minute nothing, the next, the thing was engulfed in flames. I started at it for a few seconds, my brain lagging behind the reality of the situation, lulled by the licking and leaping flames.

I snapped out of it. “Help!” I called out, panicked. The bikers ran over, the guy reached in to turn off the gas and the girl suggested I douse the remaining flames with water. I’d been frozen. I don’t do well in emergency situations, when I need to think and act quickly. If I’d been alone I would have figured it out, I think, but thank goodness there were other people there.

The stove was dripping like a Dali painting, the lower component fused to the fuel canister, the smell of burnt plastic everywhere.

“My stove,” I whispered.

I knew that my trip was over. Half the food I was carrying needed to be heated, coffee included. I might be able to push myself through a lot but I wasn’t going to do this walk without a morning cup of coffee.

It’s hard to quit something. I was thinking about that today, on my drive back home, and I realized that once I set my mind to something and go for it, I rarely quit (sometimes to my own detriment, but that’s another story). I thought about all of my research, the stages I’d planned, the treats I’d tucked into my resupply box, the excitement I’d felt about being able to head down a long path again.

But I knew I was done. I let the stove cool off and ate a cold dinner of tortillas and babybel cheese and tucked myself into my tent and fell asleep to the sound of trains on the tracks and frogs in the canal.

The next morning, at 6am, I packed up my things and turned around and walked the 19.5 miles back to where I started. I didn’t think it was possible that things could get much worse, but maybe it’s just that kind of a year.

About 3-miles into the walk, I could feel a blister developing on the bottom of my foot. I’d felt something the day before, but figured it would be fine. But this time I knew it was a blister. Should I have stopped and tried to do something about it? Probably. But my pack was so heavy that I just didn’t want to stop to take it off and put it back on more than was necessary. I was already feeling defeated, I just wanted to get the miles done and get back to my car.

So I walked, and walked, and the blister grew, and grew. After about 12-miles, I knew I’d be coming to a bench beneath a tall tree (aside from the campsites every 5-7 miles, there were few places to stop and take a break). I stared ahead, constantly looking for the bench, walking on and on.

Finally it appeared, but there was someone already there. A young guy, with a large pack and a tall walking stick.

My head was foggy from the lack of coffee, my blister ached with every step and I was annoyed that I couldn’t stop to rest at the bench. But then the guy called out- “Where are you headed?”

I stopped, and turned. “Just to Cumberland,” I said. “How about you?”

He gave me a small smile. “Denver.” A pause. “Colorado.”

I grinned, something shifted. “Tell me more.”

He talked about the route he’d plotted: starting in Pittsburgh, winding down to Cumberland and then onto the C&O to DC. He would hop to the Appalachian Trail and hike down to Georgia and then through the forests and into the midwest where he would pick up another long rail-to-trails path, and get himself over to Colorado.

“When the coronavirus hit,” he said. “I started to walk around where I live. It’s the best therapy I’ve ever found.”

I nodded and nodded.

“And then when restrictions started to lift,” he continued, “I knew that I just wanted to go out and walk for a really long time. It’s freedom.”

We talked for a few more minutes, he told me that I was the first backpacker he’d seen, and he wanted some advice. I sheepishly told him that I didn’t know much, that I was new to this too, that I didn’t even know the base weight of my pack. But I did know how to walk, and I also knew that walking was freedom, and maybe despite it all, that was enough.

He told me his name was Colby, and I wished him luck on his journey, then I continued on. I thought about him as I walked, wondering what would have happened if I hadn’t had to turn around. If I’d shortened my days would he have caught up with me? We would have been headed in the same direction and maybe I could have made a friend.

Or maybe, I wouldn’t have met him at all. Maybe I needed to turn around to find another person walking the same path.

A half mile further on I found a flat and grassy patch where I could stop and rest. I aired out my feet, drank water and ate a snack and stared off into the distance, where dark clouds were gathering.

Dark clouds. I’d timed the start of my walk for days that promised sunshine and clear skies, no rain. But the clouds were moving closer, and then there was the rumble of thunder, too.

I kept walking. What else was there to do? The clouds moved overhead and rain drops began to fall and then in the next minute, the skies opened up and the rain poured down.

Another expression: torrential downpour. How else to describe this rain? I’ve walked a hundred days on long-distance trails and I’ve walked in the rain but I have never walked in rain like this. I’d put a rain cover on my pack but hadn’t bothered to put on a rain jacket, figuring that I might just walk under a passing shower and the rain would feel good and cool on my skin.

This rain was hard and cold. It pelted down, for 10 minutes, for 20 minutes. After about 30 minutes it slowed and stopped, and I stopped too. I took off my pack and dug through to find my little towel. I looked up and down the trail and then took off my shirt and dried off as best as I could, then put on a dry shirt and pulled out a poncho to carry in my hand and then continued on.

The rain started again, falling even harder than before. I threw the poncho over my head and for awhile I stayed dry but soon there was too much rain. And then thunder, and lightening, and my blister growing larger and larger, I limped with every step through the thunderstorm, through the puddles and the mud, retracing my steps from the day before.

Thunder directly overhead and the path coming to a clearing in the trees and I stopped, and waited, and stared at the ground as water ran down the poncho into my shoes and then I saw tiny white marbles bouncing in the grass. Hail!

When it felt safer to continue I kept walking, and saw that further up the path, there was a bridge overhead and people sheltering underneath. I approached, and a woman called out to me.

“Where are you headed?”

She told me all about her days of hiking the Appalachian Trail. There was wistfulness in her voice, a tinge of envy, she looked at my pack and my poncho and my shoes and told me to savor every moment. Just as I was leaving she asked if I had a trail name. “I don’t,” I said (though the name ‘Flame’ ran through my mind). Trail names are common on the the long-distance hiking paths in the US, but not at all on the paths I’ve walked in Europe.

Something else shifted when she asked this, just as something had shifted during my conversation with Colby. It didn’t matter that I’d only made it one day on the trail and had to turn around. It only mattered that I was out there, and doing it: the weight of the pack, my battered feet, soaked to the bone, water rolling in my shoes and dripping from my nose but my legs still moving, one step at a time. Just call me Flame, I thought.

I continued, two more miles to the end. The rain stopped, the clouds moved out just as quickly as they came in. The sun poured down, warming me again. A man on a bike pulled up alongside of me. “Where are you headed?”

He was biking the final stretch of the C&O, doing an out and back ride and had seen me at my campsite the night before. “I figured you were heading south,” he said.

I told him the story of my stove, that I’d decided to turn around. And the blister, and the rain, and the hail.

“Karma,” he said, “I think if you can make it through this with a smile on your face, then something good will come back to you.”

I had a half mile left, 10 more minutes to walk. The sun was shining. My legs were still holding me up.

I smiled.

Travel in the time of Coronavirus

February 29, 2020

To say I’ve been preoccupied with the coronavirus is a bit of an understatement. I started following the news and updates from the moment I heard about it, and haven’t stopped since.

At first it was interesting, almost fascinating. Alarming too, but in a distant way. It felt as though it were out of control in China, but also contained within China. Truly a world away, though I watched as the events unfolded, curious and paying close attention.

In the past week I’ve paid such close attention that I’ve had to tell myself to take a break from reading the news. I’m still fascinated and alarmed, but I’m also worried that the virus will soon be hitting close to home, in several different ways.

This is such a dynamic and evolving situation, and I know in a week’s time it’s going to look different. And more different in another week, and so on.

While I’m worried about the greater impact: to the world, to the economy, to people and their health and their livelihood, I also can’t help but be preoccupied about my own little world, my own little plans.

And one of those little plans is an upcoming trip to Japan.

(These photos are all from a recent weekend trip to the Poconos Mountains, Pennsylvania)

I’d intended to write about this trip differently here on the blog; I was planning to to do a few posts before I left, writing about my trip and how it all came together and what I would be doing. I suppose I can still do that, in an abbreviated way, so here goes:

Japan has always been on my “list”, but until recently, not exactly on my radar. And yet, it all came together in such an easy way that it almost felt as though I was meant to be going. I saw something about cheap flights, and was astounded by just how cheap these flights really were (I’d never looked into flying from the east coast of the US to Japan, and always assumed it would be astronomically expensive. And I’m sure it sometimes is, but it turns out that there can be good deals, too!). Then I started looking at what I could do, and naturally began researching walks and pilgrimage routes. I’d already known about the Shikoku 88 Temple Pilgrimage Trail, and wondered if I could do a small portion. But upon further reading, I discovered the Kumano Kodo, the sister pilgrimage route to the Camino de Santiago! It’s too difficult to explain how the pilgrimage works (in this post anyway, I’ll explain more in a future post); but in a nutshell, the most popular route of the Kumano Kodo is typically walked in 4-6 days, which was the perfect amount of time if I tried to do a trip over my spring break.

So I bought a flight and secured all of my lodging and had this all booked up months ago. In the meantime, I’ve just had to wait. Wait, and walk. I’ve been walking a lot this winter, more in January and February than ever before. I walk, and sometimes it hits me out of the blue: I’m going to Japan! It feels impossible and almost unreal, this little trip at the beginning of April, to a country and continent and culture that is so different and new to me.

When the news of the coronavirus hit, it didn’t even occur to me to be worried that it would affect my trip to Japan. And even as friends and family asked if I was concerned, I brushed it aside. “The coronavirus is bad in parts of China,” I would say. “Aside from that cruise ship, it’s not a problem in Japan.” And it really wasn’t, until it was. The CDC, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, listed Japan as a Level Two Travel Health Notice earlier this week, recommending that “older adults or those who have chronic medical conditions consider postponing travel to the following destinations”. This level could truly change at any time. Several days ago, Italy and Iran were also Level Two, but have since moved up to Level Three, along with South Korea (widespread sustained ongoing transmission; “CDC recommends that travelers avoid all nonessential travel to the following destinations”).

In the last two or three days, the number of countries with confirmed cases of the coronavirus has been climbing, and worries that a pandemic is inevitable are mounting. Every hour, it seems, there is some new update. As I’m writing this post, I just saw that the first person in the United States has died from the coronavirus. There are still few confirmed cases here, but I think that could easily change within a week.

All of this to say: I have no idea if, in a month, I’ll be going to Japan or not. And, looking a little further afield, a summer trip to Europe may be up in the air as well. I’m planning on another Camino, and it’s truly too soon to say what the summer landscape will look like, but I need to accept that anything could happen. I know that pilgrims who are planning or have planned their spring Caminos to Spain or France or Portugal are questioning their trips; posts in the American Pilgrims on the Camino Facebook group and the Camino forum have lots of good information, but no definitive advice (the links provided take you to dedicated threads on the coronavirus).

My current approach, in terms of my April Japan trip, is to wait and see. There’s nothing I can do now, except, well, to just keep walking. I’m relatively young and healthy and generally have a strong immune system; if my flight were scheduled to leave tomorrow and Japan was still classified as a Level Two I would probably go. I’d be extra cautious, load up with tons of hand sanitizer and maybe even a few masks, and avoid close contact with others. And wash my hands like crazy. Once in the mountains of the Kii Peninsula, in the southern region of Japan, I know that I would be able to breathe freely, walk freely.

But my flight isn’t for another month and a lot can happen between now and then. And even though I’m trying to remember that travel is a luxury and that my health- and the health of others- is the most important thing, it’s still frustrating and disappointing to face the possibility that travel plans could change, or be canceled altogether. It’s out of my hands, it’s out of all of our hands. We’ve just got to wait and see.

More soon.

(Listed below are additional reliable sources of information on the Coronavirus- COVID-19):