Landlines

We walk away as darkness falls, somewhere in the void between life and death, that place where we all exist.

Our greatest fears always greet us in their ugliest form in the quiet of the night,

But to suddenly be greeted by the openness we so often take for granted comes as a warm reminder of normal life, like arriving unannounced at a friend’s house to find a slice of cake waiting for you and the kettle already on the boil.

why do young people think adventures stop when you gather a few wrinkles?

hate the idea of bucket lists, I’ve always thought you should do what you can while you can, and live without regrets, then there’s no need for bucket lists.

I know I'm clutching at straws. Every time this disease takes a new leap forward I desperately search for a simple label to put on it, as do the doctors.

I might have said the same before we left, but this trip has taught me something about all of this – the living, the dying, the void in between. It’s not about how long it lasts, it’s about the value of each moment. It’s like one of your pans of mushroom soup.’ It’s almost completely dark, on the edge of an island stuck out in the North Sea, a chilly north-easterly wind blowing in from Scandinavia, and he’s comparing life and death to a pan of soup. ‘What?’ ‘It takes loads of mushrooms, so you only ever make enough for two bowls, but it’s full of such deep and complex flavours – thyme and garlic, and earth – that it doesn’t matter. That one bowl is enough, because it holds so much.

Het is zo gemakkelijk om het leven uit te stellen, je dromen op de bovenste plank te leggen waar je ze niet meer kunt zien, zodat je nooit hoeft te erkennen dat ze niet vervuld zijn. Te gemakkelijk om het allemaal te laten eindigen zonder je verwachtingen ooit leven in geblazen te hebben, ze ooit de kans te hebben gegeven om te vliegen. Het is beter dat geld uit te geven, de tijd en de moeite te besteden, dat pad te lopen, dat papegaaienshirt aan te trekken, of wat er ook voor nodig is om die droom te vervullen.

It’s the idea that the action of walking for a long time allows the world to fall away; eventually the walker and the path become one, the walker reaches the wayless way.

We're caught in an endless cycle of 'what if', where all we can do is take the next step and see where that leads.

Irrational, irresponsible, maybe, but in that desperate moment our decision to walk offered every thing we needed — shelter in the form of our tent and a line on a map to follow. It gave us a route forward, a purpose, a reason to go on into the next day when all other reasons had fallen away.

These paths that cross our lands take human energy and imprint it on the earth, connecting us to it, leaving both the land and the human changed by that connection

We stick to the stones, stepping from one to the other, as does everyone else drawn along this thread of stone through the boglands. Isn't this the way humanity should approach everything we do on this precious planet? Keeping ourselves to a narrow corridor of use, treading on this one earth lightly and with care.