We were walking and camping on the Pembrokeshire coast in Wales lately, happily bereft of news, email, and life in the city.
We saw big machine guns at the airports in Amsterdam and Cardiff. We had to take our shoes and our belts off, apparently for our safety, because once, four years ago, this one guy tried to light his shoe on fire on a plane. (On the way back, we witnessed a man plead with security for his elderly mother to be allowed to pass through security without being forced to take her prosthetic limb off.)
From the tops of the Pembrokeshire cliffs we saw wild newborn seals greeting the world on secluded beaches. We saw wild horses near St. Davids. We saw many many sheep and cows. We saw two young domesticated male pigs apparently having sex.
We saw bluest water, bluest sky, and spent whole days without hearing the sound of airplanes. We'd walk hours before confronting any paved roads. The trail was lined with ripe blackberries.
We met a couple from Colchester whose names we never got but whose kindess we'll never forget.
Kasia's boots fell apart, but she kept walking in sandals. My backpack slowly disintegrated, and then my ankle gave out (thirtieth birthday last month, and too much time behind this damned machine the last few years...), and then the weather turned nasty. We spent a night in an overpriced bed and breakfast, and another at an overpriced hostel in Cardiff that smelled of socks before visiting family in England. I spent two days on the couch, nursing my leg and watching British television. I saw an automobile advert that used the music from the film Powaqatsi. Wrong wrong wrong.
At the airport on the way back we were not allowed to bring a bottle of water through security, but could buy an overpriced one afterwards. This because a terror plot that may or may not have existed may or may not have involved liquid explosives. We saw a man hassled for neglecting to discard his eyedrops before passing through security.
Without meaning any offence, I did not miss the mechanized, urbanized world we have returned to. I did not miss the obligatory avoidance of eye contact in the city, the unspoken rule that one does not say hello to strangers, the difference between being dirty from an eight hour walk through the countryside versus an eight minute walk around town. I didn't miss knowing who was bombing who, where, and for what. I didn't miss the inane antics that characterize politics nor the concept of celebrity and the culture's inexplicable lust for it.
That all said, after a much needed and much appreciated break I will be back to the usual here shortly.
