This Time Is Important
On long-distance walking, self-preservation and what we leave behind
For the past month or so, I have been preparing for my second solo hike.
I completed my first at the end of July last year—a six-day, 130 km walk from Brescia through Franciacorta, Lake Iseo, and the Seriana Valley, all the way to Bergamo. This year, I’ll pick up from where I left off and embark on a hike twice as long, starting in Bergamo and crossing Val Camonica, up through the Tonale Pass, and all the way to Val di Sole in Trentino. Twelve days, 230 km. It feels good to start from where I ended and double the length. The simple reason is that I was just not done walking.
Going on a solo hike has been a life-altering experience for me, and I didn’t realise it until it was almost over. Before I left, all I felt was pain—an unresolved sense of unlovableness and deep, deaf sorrow that concealed any self-preserving fear. I had tried to process and numb it in various ways—therapy, alcohol, business—but with poor, temporary results. Walking felt like my last resort. Somehow, deep down, I knew I needed to remove myself from the dynamics that hadn’t worked before and try something else, somewhere else, even if I was alone.
Especially as I was alone.
I had no way of knowing back then, but walking that trail turned out to be one of the best things I have ever done for myself. More than a catharsis, it was a true act of self-love—of meeting myself anew. Doing it as a solitary pursuit was a means to an end that expanded beyond expectations.
Leaving was perhaps the toughest part. I felt strange and out of character, suddenly unsure of why I was doing it. On the train that would take me to the beginning of the trail, I was overwhelmed by a sense of emptiness.
“I love you,” my mother texted me then, and I cried, feeling defenceless against the potency of this pure sentiment, unable to know what to do with it. On the other hand, my recent relationship had felt like such a tragic, self-fulfilling prophecy: you are not worthy, it had told me, echoing the voice in my head.
The first couple of days felt tentative. Being my first attempt, I didn’t know how my legs would respond to the distance or my shoulders to the weight of the backpack I was carrying. My mind was stuck in familiar loops, visualising old scenes, reliving the tragic epilogue, hoping to find one detail, one thing that would change the outcome, or at least my perception of it. Removing myself from those thoughts felt hard and sometimes impossible: my mind would just drift right back. It took a hailstorm that almost swept me off the ground to kick me out of my own head and into the present. After that—after that first summoning of my animal instinct, high on adrenaline and exhausted from the effort—my head started to shift.
Day after day, I was becoming less mind, more body.
For the first time in my life, I was overwhelmed with an unprecedented sense of tenderness towards my body that took me by surprise: the body I never loved and that had been rejected, betrayed, and minimised was proving everybody wrong. Even at its sorest, it carried me through woodlands, atop hills, and along rivers, relentlessly, without fail. There I was, with my universe turned upside down: my mind was useless, my body was everything I could count on.
By day four, I felt lighter, my movements smoother. I was awakened by the ongoing state of alertness required to follow the signs and remain aware of any threat while walking alone in the woods—thunderstorms, animals, people. And while my reptile brain was on in the foreground, in the background was a constant, low-buzzing stream of consciousness with sudden bits of clarity—small epiphanies I had been missing and regained through what I later realised was the only way possible: a blissful and prolonged state of tune-in.
And so, when the last stretch of the walk came to a close, I felt so emotionally shaken and so sad it was over—so soon, too soon!—that I burst into a cry-laughter as I sat on the marble steps of the Cathedral in Bergamo, exhausted and exhilarated at once. “I felt happy, but in a distant way. Mostly, I felt like crying,” wrote Nick Hunt in this moving piece about his walk from Holland to Istanbul. Even though my endeavour was minuscule in comparison, I felt his words viscerally.
It was as if reality had clicked into place on a level that entailed a shift in living and thinking; as if the old way was now entirely misaligned and ill-fitted. I didn’t want to return to that. I was so afraid I was going to lose that state of awareness the moment my legs stopped moving, that I didn’t want to stop moving at all. From the moment I finished walking, all I could think of was that walk, and when the next one would be.
[The things we leave behind on the trail; the things we gain in the pursuit of something else.]
Last year, I walked out of pain. This year, I am walking because I discovered the life-saving effect it has on me. I am walking because I want to be back in that prolonged state of flow. Because I desperately miss the physical fatigue and the beatitude that follows. Because I miss being a lone stranger crossing foreign lands with my eyes wide open. I miss the feeling of being anyone and no one.
I miss the fear and the self-preservation.
I can’t say I am ready for this second hike, just like I wasn’t ready for the first. There are many unpredictable factors. Will my body behave like it did last year? Will the weather be merciful? Will my decision-making be solid, or will I be reckless? Will I hurt?
Still, I enjoyed the process of training for it—that slow build-up, becoming reacquainted with my body in motion, with that familiar headspace. I liked how my sessions marked the passing of time and the approaching date when I would set out again for real.
In my first week of training, I walked twenty kilometres along the road that lines the lungomare of the Lido, continuing along the Murazzi all the way to the Alberoni, the southernmost tip of this long, thin barrier island dividing the Adriatic and the lagoon. The road is flat; the training lacks the element of elevation. Endurance will be gained in the moment.
The Magnolia grandiflora of the Hotel Excelsior had just shot its buds; soon, they would bloom into candid, champagne-cup-shaped, sweetly perfumed flowers and steal the scene. But it was the pittosporum that was having its moment—its scent reaching my nostrils in inebriating whiffs as I sped past shrub after shrub at six kilometres an hour. A few shy poppies dotted the grass below. Around them, the purple, roundish heads of the clover flowers swung in the mild breeze of a late spring day.
That day, for the first time since the beginning of the year, Venice felt full of promise, and I with it. The weather was perfect, the sun high, and the days decidedly longer. I felt my body enter that state of flow, a sort of trance, a transcendence. That’s when ideas come. That’s when the brain starts working.
In my second and third weeks of training, the jasmine lining the railings delimiting the area of the Giardini had bloomed. Isn’t it incredible how these minuscule flowers can give off such an intense scent? I stopped to inhale deeply, counting to six like they teach you in yoga, before resuming my pace. By my third week of training, I didn’t need to approach the jasmine to appreciate its scent; it came to me, enveloped me, chased me down. There was no way to escape it. I surrendered to its sweetness.
This week marked my last week of training. I am leaving today and will start walking tomorrow.
On my living room floor, an open backpack is waiting to be filled with the bare minimum—a lesson in stripping back and then taking off some more. I packed no makeup, no shampoo, no shoes besides my walking boots, one change for the evening, and otherwise only walking clothes. I have a fresh new book, Last Supper by Rachel Cusk, a notepad, and enough underwear to cover half the trail, hoping to find a place to do some hand-washing in some fast-drying temperatures. Everything has been planned: the B&Bs where I’ll sleep each night, where to get my credential stamped. I downloaded the GPX maps and the weather forecasts for each stop. I have plasters and tick repellent, a power bank, and waterproofs. I have this body.
The out-of-office went on this evening. I wrote it with the understanding that I won’t be carrying my computer and that I will not allow my eyes to land on my phone inbox. The automatic reply says: “Please be mindful: this time is important so I can keep doing what I do without burning out.”
Yes. This time is important.
On the phone last night, he said:
“Even if you feel a bit weary and tense right now, it’ll all fall into place once again after a day or two. You will be awash with happiness the moment you start walking, you know that. It’ll all make sense. I am proud of you and inspired by your enthusiasm. It’s contagious.”
He told me that, and I felt such humble thankfulness for him. He feels so new in so many ways, says things I have never heard before, not like that anyway. Like the hailstorm, yet gently, he teaches me to self-preserve. To take a better look.
Today, as I pack my bags and start from where I left off, all I feel is lightness. I have no expectation outside of the joy and pleasure of walking. I have no other purpose outside of being open. I have no fear beyond the uncontrollable force of the elements. And, unlike last time, I look forward to returning, so I can leave again, anew.
Che gioia leggerti qui! TVB
Beautiful just beautiful writing .. 💚❤️