Walking

Three years eight months and twelve days. That’s how long it’s been since I began this journey. It started as most journeys do, just with a strong urge that you have to go some where.

He was sitting across from me, on one otherwise uneventful train ride. He may not have been much to look at on first glance. But the seasoned traveller can recognise those invisible marks on the face, the stories that is held within in a smile exposing decoloured teeth. Slowly, you recognise other things. The book he’s reading- not common for a local, an armlet that looks like it’s travelled a long way too, the shoes that have done a lot of walking. The clothes that will help blend into any culture. Oh yes, you know those signs.

In the conversation that followed, you recognised many things about each other. It was then that he mentioned, somewhat as an afterthought. This place in the mountains. The air is crisp, nippy even. Cedars surround the place. Something about the air there, fills you up in a certain way. On some mornings you can feel it, the air is blue. Woods surround. Somewhere in the woods, there is a stone hut with the bow of a hunter still intact.

You chuckle at the thought of the folklore. A stone hut with a hunter’s bow. That is how myths are born. That is how stories start. That is how journeys begin.

Many summers and winters have gone by since. You’ve come a long way, visited cottages in the hills, forts on mountains and places by the sea. You have attained a calm that is difficult to explain.

However, there is one thing. Just one little thing. No matter how far your feet seem to carry you and not matter how many lives look at you from the outside and smile gently, there is the memory of a face that refuses to go away. It seems at times that yes, this is your calling, that yes, you are meant to be this nomad. And yet in the deepest of moments when the mind has achieved this certain sense of acceptance- it can happen anywhere, in a monastery or by a nameless grave, you feel the gentle piercing of fluid in the corners of your eyes.

You wipe them off before they amount to much.

It surprises me, these sudden attacks, these sudden moments where I know for certain where I ought to be and yet every new journey does not seem to be leading me there, leading me to you. It surprises me because although over the years, my tear glands seem to function less, and yet the heart and mind still come together as if in meditation, making me aware. Aware of a need.

I do not know how many miles I’m going to continue walking. I do not know how far I’ll go. I do not know if any of my questions will be answered, if in some round about way our paths will cross never to separate again.

For now, I just have to keep walking.