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Nadine Walks

stories of trekking and travel

Still walking, still writing

November 6, 2018

Could this be the longest time since the start of this blog that I’ve gone without posting??

Maybe. My last post was in August, where I was walking through the sunshine on my second day on the Pennine Way. I walked from June 20th-July 4th and in the last four months I’ve only managed to write about two days of the walk… yikes!

So with all of this silence it might be a fair question I’m about to ask: is anyone still out there?

autumn sunlight

 

Oh, I sure hope so. The blog may be a little silent but I haven’t gone anywhere. In fact, lately, I’ve felt pretty locked into my writing, it just hasn’t been here. I’ve had ideas for the blog, and a dozen posts are half written (well, all in my head), and I want to write a few more guides, and more e-books too, and… there’s so much!

But right now, my energy is somewhere else, it’s with my book. I’ve mentioned it before, and maybe you remember: I’ve been working on a memoir that tells the story of my first long walk on the Camino de Santiago. There’s still so much work to be done but I think that- just maybe- it is starting to come together. And that’s been so exciting! Really, really exciting!

I’ve missed this blog though, I’ve missed writing about my walking adventures and even just the general thoughts on life. And I miss all of you, too, the small interactions we have here… or maybe even just knowing that my words are going out to some unknown place, read by some unknown people. And that the act of publishing something here, anything here, is important.

I’m back for now, with this little post that is mostly to say hi, and to share some of the beautiful fall scenes around my neighborhood and local park (this has been one of the most beautiful fall seasons in recent memory!).

fall days

I also wanted to give a few updates, just about things I’ve been meaning to share or things I’m thinking about, so here we go:

1. Anyone here on Instagram and not following my page, Nadine Walks? Well, come on over! I’m still consistently posting a photo just about every day from my walks, and right now I’m in the middle of photos from the Pennine Way. Sometimes I write a longish caption that captures some little detail or story from the day, it’s kind of like mini-blogging (which means that I’m missing writing about my walks here! I need to get back into it!!).

View this post on Instagram

Back to the Pennine Way! Day 10, Holwick to Dufton. I’d powered down my phone the night before because I had no way to charge it and was running really low on battery. I woke up early, with the sun, rolled out of my bunk and attempted to drink some instant coffee mixed with lukewarm water (not recommended). I turned on my phone to check the time and snap my usual ‘start the day selfie’ and then turned it off again and started walking. From the first mile, I could tell that I was dragging. Was it the very mediocre dinner I’d had the night before? The nearly marathon distance I’d walked? I suppose the reason didn’t matter, because there was only one solution: just walk. However you can, just pull yourself down the trail. #pennineway #ukhikingofficial #ukhiking #hikingadventures #walking #solofemaletravel #walk1000miles

A post shared by Nadine (@nadine_walks) on Nov 6, 2018 at 6:08am PST

2. I’ve been home from my summer travels for over two months, and so far all I’ve mentioned here on the blog is that I walked for 15 days on the Pennine Way. But did you know that in August, after my four weeks at my writer’s retreat, I hopped back on Le Puy to walk for three days through France?? It was a whirlwind baby-Camino but I loved it. It was all I could fit in but it was worth it. Camino time, even just a bit of it, warms my soul. I’ll write about that sometime, too.

smiley sunflower on the Chemin du Puy

3. Speaking of the Camino, last month I read Beth Jusino’s recently published book, Walking to the End of the World. I’d been following Beth’s blog and her adventures on the Camino for some time, and was delighted to be able to read about her journey more fully in her book. The unique spin of this particular Camino story is that she (and her husband) walk not just the 500-miles of the Camino Frances, but they start in Le Puy and all told, walk 1,000 miles! Since I’ve walked a little over half of the Le Puy route myself, it was such a joy to hear more about that part of her Camino experience.

walking to the end of the world, Beth jusino

4. I’m thinking about starting up a Patreon page, and this feels both scary and exciting. Here’s a link to a great little video explaining what Patreon is; basically, it’s a way for an audience to help support the artists they follow. It’s hard for me to ask for help, so this is a big step for me, but I think it’s an important one. So far, I haven’t been earning any money from the work that I’m creating, and that’s been more than okay. I’ll keep writing and taking photographs, regardless of money or audience. But as I think about where I want to take my writing, I realize that I need to look into different ways that I can support myself. Maybe this Patreon thing won’t translate to much, maybe it will be a couple bucks a month that can cover coffee costs on my walks (or, even more realistically, the fees it takes to run this blog), but I think I’m going to try it. More on this soon.

Okay, time to go. It’s a very gray, rainy fall day over in my neck of the woods; we are just past peak foliage and some leaves are still clinging to the trees, stubbornly refusing to come down despite the rain and the wind of the last few days. Hanging on for just a little longer, as if to say, “Winter may be coming, but not quite yet.” If the rain would ever stop maybe I could run outside for a quick, late afternoon walk. If only. But instead, I think it could be nice to light a candle in the darkening of the room, pour a glass of good red wine, and hunker down to work on my book.

Thanks for still being here, and I’ll write again soon.

fall day in Ridley Creek State Park

17 Comments / Filed In: Writing
Tagged: Camino de Santiago, Chemin du puy, hiking, joy, life, patreon, pennine way, walking, writing

How Writing a Book is a lot like Walking a Camino

February 16, 2015

Three sounds are competing for my attention in my kitchen right now: the hiss of boiling water from the red teapot on the stove top, the steady drip of my kitchen faucet to assure that the pipe doesn’t burst, and the faint buzzing of the heater at my side- I’m sitting so close that I’m almost on top of it. This seat- and the bathroom- are the warmest spots in my apartment. And while I’ve considered taking my computer into the bathroom with me, I’ve decided to set up camp at my kitchen table instead.

It is winter, and it is cold. Really cold. With another Camino on my mind I’m itching to get outside and walk, and on most winter days I’ll bundle up and walk for at least 30-minutes around my neighborhood. But today? Not a chance.

So on these days, and on so many of the cold, short days of winter, I find I have lots of extra time on my hands. There’s a little bit of restlessness on these days, but mostly I’m content to stay in. Because it gives me time to do what I’ve been wanting to do for years: write a book.

Now, I haven’t actually started writing a book yet, except for maybe a few pages of rusty words cobbled together that don’t really have a direction yet. It’s more like I’m setting the groundwork for writing a book, something that I thought wouldn’t be that exciting until I actually started doing it. And I have to say: this is exciting.

Writing a book is something I think I always sort of knew that I would do, even when I was very young. Writing (and reading!) were interesting to me, and fun. Writing has been this thought in the back of my head that I’d sometimes pull out and make a few half-hearted attempts to do something about, but I always failed to be consistent. As anyone who’s ever tried to write knows: it’s so much more fun to imagine being a writer than it is to actually write.

Except now, I’m finding it kind of fun. I’ve decided that I want to stop worrying about all the ‘what-if’s’ of trying to write a book, stop worrying about all the other ‘stuff’ that maybe I should do first, stop worrying about whether I’m actually someone who should be writing a book, someone who could be writing a book… and I’m just going to write a book. It’s the most obvious thing in the world and yet it took me years to get here.

I came back from the Camino knowing that I wanted to write about this experience, knowing that I wanted to turn the story into a book, but I thought about doing everything else first. Building up this blog. Writing essays. Writing an e-book. Finding freelancing work. Researching agents.

I didn’t really realize it at the time, but it was all just a way of stalling. I mean, doing all of these things is and can be very important; I knew I didn’t want to stop blogging, and I’ve written a few essays, and will continue to. But mostly I was putting off the thing that I really wanted to do, thinking that I needed much more preparation than what I had until I could actually start.

It reminds me of the Camino, actually. I think about all of those months of preparation: researching the gear and testing out my pack and my shoes, going on as many training hikes as I could, trying to read up on albergues and towns, thinking I could learn Spanish. I wanted to do it all before I left, because what I was about to take on was really big, and really scary. It was intimidating, and all along I kept thinking, “Who am I to be doing this? Who am I to think that I can do this?”

But on the Camino, it turns out that all you need to do is show up and walk. You need a way to get to whatever town you’re going to start in, and you need a pack to hold your things and you need some decent shoes to walk in, but really, you don’t need much else. You just figure it out as you go, and there is nothing like the actual experience to understand what the journey is going to be like for you.

So did I need to do all the preparation that I did? The training walks helped me out so much, but honestly? I arrived in Santiago at the same time as so many of the people who’d started with me in St Jean. And we were all fit and happy and smiling at the end. I was more fit in the beginning than most, and better adapted to the walking, but other than save me some pain, the destination was the same for all of us. In the end, we all got there.

And when it comes to writing a book, it dawns on me that it is just like beginning a Camino: you need to have a very general idea of what you’re getting yourself into, you need a few of the specifics nailed down, and then you just need to begin. And the beginning might not be pretty… I might have the writing equivalent of blisters or bed bugs, of fatigue and a too heavy pack, of sleepless nights because of incessant snoring… but in the end, none of these things needs to prevent me from writing the book. Because it can get done as long as I begin, and as long as I can do a little bit every day.

I’m taking a writing class, though it doesn’t involve much actual writing of the book and instead has me starting more at the end, rather than the beginning (I’m learning all about how to eventually get someone interested in the thing that I’m going to write). But in a rather twisted way, I’m wondering if this wasn’t the best possible way I could have started. It’s forced me to think very specifically about the kind of book I want to write and the things that I want to say. Mapping out an annotated table of contents when I hadn’t given much thought to a structure or narrative arc was tough, but it made me see what my book could look like. It gave me a beginning.

This has been a quiet winter for me, but there has also been a lot of joy. I sit myself down at roughly the same time every evening, put on my writing playlist, and begin to chip away. This task feels more daunting to me than walking 500-miles did; this feels like I have thousands and thousands of miles to go before I get anywhere.

But there’s a lot to see along the way.

And it doesn’t feel impossible anymore.

Sign on Dragonte route, Camino Frances

Leave a Comment / Filed In: Camino de Santiago, Writing
Tagged: Camino de Santiago, destination, discipline, goal, journey, joy, travel, walking, winter, work, writing, writing a book

No Nuts in my Pasta; Italy as a Visitor

December 29, 2014

Since returning from the Camino this summer I’ve been struggling to find the same kind of energy that I had while on my walk through Spain. I’ve found it in small moments: a hike in a park with my Camino pack on my back; an inspiring conversation with an old friend; in live, loud music in a crowded amphitheater; when editing an essay and finding the perfect expression.

But these small moments have been a contrast to entire days full of movement and newness, and I’ve missed all of the life I was living on the Camino.

One way to get it back is to travel. I always suspected this, and it’s been confirmed in the tiny ‘trips’ I’ve taken since the Camino. Driving down to Virginia, out to Cleveland. I’ve soaked up the movement and the company of good friends and family, and I wish I could get more of it.

And this week I am getting more of it. Two days ago I sat in my window seat on a plane that was about to fly me to Copenhagen, and along with a tiny shiver of nervousness, I felt great waves of excitement. I texted a friend in the moments before the plane took off: “Unlike my flight to Iceland, this time I’m going to get a meal!” and “I hope there’s free wine!” (for the record, there wasn’t) and “There’s a tiny mirror next to the food tray!”

It was the excitement of travel, of flying off to a new place, of wondering which movie I would choose to watch, of what food would be served in an aluminum tray, of what I would see when I’d land in a new country.

Copenhagen wasn’t even my destination, but as I waited for an hour in the airport before boarding the connecting flight to Bologna, I was so happy that I would have a longer layover on the way home. It was the most beautiful airport I’d ever been in, with so many wonderful examples of Danish design. And it was thrilling to be somewhere new again. The old Camino excitement was back.

I’ve been in Italy for two days now, but spending time with a friend is a completely different kind of travel experience than going off on my own. I’m being driven around in a car, the language is being spoken for me, menu items translated, free coffee from the local cafe because I’m a visitor from America. And right now I’m lying on a couch with a heavy blanket across my legs, Christmas lights blinking on a tiny tree, music playing from small speakers, the peel of a clementine on the coffee table at my side. This could be a scene from my own life, so it feels a bit surreal that I’m in Italy, in someone’s home. I’m not a pilgrim, I’m not quite a tourist… I suppose I’m a visitor. I don’t think I’ve ever had this type of travel experience before.

But so far, I like it. There was a five minute exchange at lunch today of whether the pasta dish I wanted to try had any nuts in it. Our server talked to the chef who reported that he shaves something into the filling of the pasta that may or may not be a nut, but to be on the safe side he didn’t want me to risk my life, so thought I should order something else. The pasta I DID order was incredible, of course, and assuredly nut-free. I don’t have to worry about trying to explain my allergy in Italian, or that something will be lost in translation. I have someone to show me how to weigh vegetables in the grocery store, I have someone to take me to the best places for coffee, to explain how to order a ‘double’ shot of espresso when one doesn’t quite seem to be enough.

There’s a beauty in doing this all on my own, of figuring it out and learning from the mistakes, and I’m sure I’ll have that in my short time in Copenhagen. But for now, I’ll take this fairly stress-free and more intimate style of traveling: of experiencing Italy as a visitor.

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Tagged: airports, Copenhagen, dreams, energy, Italy, joy, life, travel, visitor

The Camino Provides

August 31, 2014

I walked into Santiago over a month ago… a month! I traveled for a few more weeks after that, but even so: how has it already been a month since the end of my pilgrimage? Since returning home I’ve thought about the Camino every day. At first it was all I could do to just settle back into life and catch up on sleep and see friends and family and adjust to being home. The Camino- and everything it entailed- was sort of a hazy presence that I knew I would get to, eventually.

And I’ve been trying to get to it lately- go back and sort it all out in my head, wrap my mind around what it meant, what it continues to mean, what it will mean for my future. But it will probably take years to sort out and by that time I’ll have walked another Camino and will need to figure that one out… it’s going to be a lifelong process, I think.

That being said, I’ve been doing some good, solid post-Camino thinking. The other night I got together with a friend who walked the Camino Frances six years ago, and I had a million questions for her. At first they were fairly standard: how heavy was your pack, what was your experience like in this town, etc. But then I started to get to what was really on my mind: how and when did you form friendships? Did they last throughout the Camino or did you break away? Did you find that the Camino gave you what you needed?

This is a big one, it’s the question that’s occupied most of my post-Camino thoughts. “The Camino provides” was a phrase that I often heard during my walk, and one that I’ve used myself from time to time. Nervous at the airport in JFK, wondering what I was getting myself into… and then right away I meet Julie, who is also walking the Camino, also a bit nervous, and so happy to talk to me. The Camino provides. Our flight is delayed, we are stuck in Iceland overnight, by the time I make it to St Jean I am a day behind schedule. Had I started on June 26th, as planned, it would have been a wet, gray, rain-soaked walk through the Pyrenees. But June 27th, the day I started? Clear blue skies, views for miles, sunshine and a cool breeze. The Camino provides. I worried about meeting people and making friends, and while I was so glad to walk that first day alone, I couldn’t help but notice other pilgrims linking up and walking together. On the last hour of the descent to Roncesvalles I met Mirra, from San Francisco. We ended up sticking together until she left in Burgos, and I couldn’t have imagined a better person to spend the first half of my Camino with. The Camino provides.

And this was just the first few days of my trip. There are countless other examples of how the Camino provided something to me when I needed it. Small stuff: an open bar when I was desperate for coffee. A snore free night when I most needed sleep. But the bigger stuff, too: companionship when I felt the most alone. Guidance when I felt lost and uncertain.

And then, well, there was my entire Camino. I’ve wondered- while I was walking and now, a month after I’ve finished- why everyone had the Camino experience that they did. Why was my Camino so, so good? Why was I so lucky, so blessed? Why did I avoid injury and pain? How did I escape the bed bugs and the notorious snorers? How did I always get a bed, and sometimes the last bed? How did I avoid walking in the rain? How did I meet the most incredible people, always at just the right times? How did I have so much fun?

Something we started saying towards the end of the walk was- “Oh, Camino.” and “Why Camino, why??” It’s like we realized- for good or bad- that this experience was a bit out of our control. The Camino was going to give us the experience we were supposed to have, and we could question it but in the end, the only thing we could really do was accept it.

Why, for instance, did Susie, after an injury riddled walk, get bed bugs on her last night in Finisterre? Why did Joe and Adele, ready to relax and celebrate, get food poisoning the night they arrived in Santiago? Why did Laura, the Italian mother, get a huge blister on her heel three days before the end of the walk?

I think about these examples, of the pain and struggle at the very end of the pilgrimage, and I wonder why. Why does anyone have to experience pain? Why them, and not me? Was it for Susie to prove, once and for all, that she was far stronger than she ever could have imagined? That Joe and Adele, on their honeymoon, were able to support each other- truly- through the good and bad? That Laura could put a smile on her face and continue to walk and be the best possible example for her 12- year old daughter?

I don’t know. It’s what I saw, and I suppose that the meaning of any life experience- Camino or not- is what we make of it.

And this is what I saw, in part, on my Camino: the Camino gave me joy and life and fun. I came to walk the Camino for many reasons, but the timing of it was because I needed to move towards something. The serious relationship I’d been in had ended 6 months before and the better part of the last year had been very difficult for me. I wasn’t happy, I wasn’t having fun, I was just getting through my days in order to get to a better time. Even though I knew I would find it again, I couldn’t feel the joy in life.

Why does anyone experience pain? I don’t know, but I do know that the contrast of such incredible highs after difficult lows is a thing of beauty. It’s life: we feel pain, but we can also feel joy. We can also feel great joy. I came to the Camino, in part, to feel life again, all of the beauty and magic and hope and joy of life, and I was flooded by it all.

My Camino wasn’t perfect, or totally pain free. Sometimes it felt difficult. But most of the time, it seemed like all I could see and feel was beauty and magic and joy.

The Camino provides.

walk through pyrenees

Camino pathSunrise on the Camino

Leave a Comment / Filed In: Camino de Santiago, Inspiration
Tagged: Camino de Santiago, friendship, fun, hope, journey, joy, life, loss, love, meaning, pain, pilgrimage, Spain, travel, walking, way of st james

Welcome! I’m Nadine: a traveler, a pilgrim, a walker, a writer, a coffee drinker. This is where I share my stories, my thoughts and my walks. I hope you enjoy the site!
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Walking along the coast on the Camino del Norte

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Nadine writing in journal in Arrés on the Camino Aragones, sunset in background

Curving path of Hadrian's Wall, Day 13 on the Pennine Way
Nadine in Finisterre, Camino de Santiago

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