I used to be a planner. I used to be a walker. Walking was what I did with my Saturdays. I would plan a trip. I would have a route card, or a map, usually both. I would work out mileage and timings. I would leave on my kitchen counter a copy of where I was going and when I would be back (latest) just in case something happened. I used to be a different person.
I have lost the art of planning a walk – or perhaps I have (re)discovered the art of walking without a fixed plan. If I’m late back, or indeed if I don’t come back at all, no-one would notice for a while. And probably wouldn’t worry for a while after that. And by then it probably wouldn’t matter.
I don’t leave notes behind anymore. Partly because no-one would come looking for them, but mostly because I seem to be aligning my walking style to my writing style.
It seems to be accepted wisdom that writers fall broadly into two camps the planners and the pantsers. The planners, plan; they create a structure and write to that. The pantsers, ‘fly by the seat of their pants’, they take risks, they just set out and see what happens.
I’m a born administrator, a project planner, a life planner (sad but true) – so it surprised me when I finally worked out that when it comes to writing I’m not a planner. I’ve got through all of my exams without heeding the advice to ‘plan your answer’ ‘structure your essay’. I’ve always just started writing, because starting settles my nerves, and then hoping for the best. I’d scribble a few reminders on the question paper in the hope that I wouldn’t forget anything. I remember English Lit exams where I wrote parts of the quotes I’d learned before I even looked at the questions, before I forgot them and just in case I’d need them. But once I'd read the questions, I just picked one and started writing, working out my answer even as I was putting the words on the page.
That's still how I write. I find the jumping-off point and jump, see what happens. And before you ask, yes a great deal of it ends up in the bin, but if that was good enough for the creator of Gatsby, it's good enough for me.
Although I’ve always known the inextricable link between walking and writing, it’s taken me quite a while to realise that rather than trying to plan my writing around my walks, and planning my walks in infinite detail, I’ll fare better by walking the way I write. By just starting out and seeing where it leads.
I've made a lot of walk-plans over the last four years but I haven't really done much walking, other than around familiar routes. I now need to walk more, more often, further, in different places and, simply, walk differently. I need to walk more freely.
This isn’t quite as aimless as it sounds. There’s always an idea, a direction, it’s just not fixed enough to be called a plan unless, for example, you can call ‘head up onto the moor and turn right, work out the way down from just above Ilkley’ a plan.
That's what I did. I’d had a brief look at the OS map. I hadn’t measured distance, other than in the ‘doesn’t look too far’ sense. Hadn’t told anyone – this is the Yorkshire Dales not the wilds of Scotland or the Alps.
Walking up the lane to get onto the moor was enough to remind me just how much I need the re-set, how much weight I need to shift. I was breathing hard already. Put to shame by the runners. Once through the gate, I peeled off a layer. Both literally, removing my coat, and metaphorically, by letting go of the opinions of others. I was out here on a beautiful day, walking alone, which is without any shadow of a doubt one of most favourite activities in the whole world.
I started to notice things.
The gorse flowers were the only bright colour aside from the sky.
The heather was still winter dull, the bracken was still autumn brown. But spring was in the air…literally. Skylark song. And on the ground the panic call of the grouse.
I climbed slowly upwards. When it came to a choice, I opted for the lower grassier trail rather than the well-walked route up onto the top. I ambled below the towering crags, amazed at the trees that seem to be growing out of the rock wall, having seeded in the fissure and sent their roots in search of fertile soil beyond the rock, or perhaps above it. I’m sure there must be a life lesson in there somewhere, but I don’t know what it is. Yet.
The trail dropped down to a beck. A dark pool and bubbling white water. I stood for a while, all confidence in the sureness of my footing evaporating with those swirls. It wasn't deep. It wasn't wide. But still I hesitated. This is how un-hiked I have become. Time was, I’d barely have noticed the interruption to the trail.
I kidded myself I was stopping to photograph; I was stopping to listen to the giggling of the running stream. I wasn't. I was stopping because I needed to work out where to step. And to allow myself a congratulatory smile when I’d done it.
It was a small reminder that we don’t need to compare ourselves to others. The runner going the other way did not even break pace as she crossed. I needed to think about it. And that’s ok. I have no ambition to run the trails. I do want to get back to unhesitant though. This day was a start.
The beginning of a re-set. Learning to walk again.
Eventually the trail brought me out onto the top of the moor, wide open space, and I seemingly had it all to myself – just me and the birds. I actually laughed aloud for the surprising joy of it. A beautiful day. All this space. I had been out early so I could spend as long as it took to find my way.
As it happens the trails are all well-walked. The recent rains had drained into the hollows, leaving the ground firm enough. Only when I began the descent did I find places where I needed to scramble. What looked like steps as I approached them became retaining planks – efforts to hold back landslip on the eroded pathways, that were as deep as paddy terraces and in places required the kneel to step approach and in one case the only option was to jump.
It was only just lunchtime as I walked down into town. There was a time that this would have felt strange, wrong even, to have completed my walk so early in the day. But now I know that a walk takes as long as it takes. This one had been about three hours. Long enough to begin with.
And because I’d been out early, it left half a day to turn to other things.
Like a long late lunch on the balcony back at the apartment.
Like picking up a pen and writing...picking up a book and reading...putting everything down and just being.
~ / ~
I said a little while I ago that I do want to go back to walking, but differently. I'm beginning to find out that the way I want to walk is the way I write. I want to set out with a map and a compass and route in mind, but I also want to take the advice of one of my writing mentors and deviate interestingly. I want to choose the actual path on a whim. Go along the top, or below the crags, depending on how I feel that day. During the course of the next few days, I would practice this new-found art.
I would start to learn the joys of realising that if some things cannot be pre-determined, then life gets easier, and walking gets more interesting, when we accept that nothing is pre-fixed in certainty.
