The worm wakes.
These moments never fail to surprise me. The ocean is at my feet, whispering softly on the rocks. What Roger Deakin called ‘the whispering white line’ where the sea meets the land. It sounds like deep breathing, like someone sleeping.
Dawn creeps up over the line of the Lizard that recedes away to the left hand horizon. One grey line on top of a lighter grey line. A leaden sky appears to reflect the dark grey of the sea below it. The light is pale and still weak at this hour. Like everything else, it hasn’t quite got going yet. Yet it makes the grass that surrounds me glow like wheat.
My eyes are only half open. My face is the only thing recognisably human about my form. It peeks out from the hood of the sleeping bag. My body is a black and orange tube. My grey eye mask is stuck to my forehead. A seagull swerves sideways over the cliff and eyes me suspiciously.
I am as still as a corpse, staring, staring at the sea and the infinite ripples and lines and wavelets that meet and intersect on and on to the horizon. It’s early, probably around 6. Something about the light tells me so.
The path is between the sea and me, a brown line cutting left to right, east to west. The breeze is soft on my face. I feel like I could be the last person on earth.
What a way to wake. Give me this over any five star hotel. I certainly wouldn’t have a view that could compare to this. I’m living in it not just looking at it. All right, when it rains I have to take off my rose tinted spectacles but even those dawns have their own soggy charm.
I take a simple pleasure in getting up and being ready to go in 10 minutes. I brush my teeth with water from my battered Sigg water bottle. It’s been dropped so many times it’s covered in dents and dimples. I rather like its travel worn look. I should get another as I’ve realised one isn’t enough for these long, often remote walks.
It’s so easy. The pack is back on my back and the path is there at my feet. The only constant. The line which I follow west, that I’ve been following for over 5 years. ‘I Walk the line.’ I walk til it’s time to eat, then sleep, wake up and do it again. On and on into a trance where all is reduced to the path, the sea, my feet and my breath. Breathe with the sea. Walk with the light. And keep going.
The Slow Walker 