✹道✹ camino ✹ weg ✹ way ✹
Might you find yourself comfortably fulfilling someone else’s expectations or under the overwhelming force of the social timeline, walk the path. Walk the path that has no certainties or expectations, walk the path that pulls your heart (which is one with your mind, your soul and all the other words we invented to separate that which is one). Offer no resistance to the path. Scream, shout, cry, laugh, fear, rejoice, repent, revive the original self.
The aim of meditating is to access the part of us, sentiment beings, that is not thinking nor feeling. When we think we are evaluating, judging and organising an experience, brain activity. When we are feeling we are connecting and relating the immediate to the past, to the future through past experiences. The combination of these two processes constitutes our states of being. Meditation techniques aim to disengage your focus on controlling these processes.
Our brain is an organ as any other organ, although it has some of the least understood functions and process, in my opinion, due to the fact that it is this very processes and functions that we are trying to analyse to “objectively” describe them. As an organ, it does what it is suppose to do: process information both internal and external and execute the required actions to continue our existence in its most efficient way possible with the resources we have. It is the executive center. So far it would seem that I am putting forward a functional & computerized concept of the brain. Might it be the case. However is not the mind I am talking about but brain proceses
This book is about me, my explorations, reflections and thoughts, and my experience. This is my story intermixed with other stories, stories of other beings and other things that are not me. Although I might not be doing a lot of “I see”, “I do”, “I feel”, the I is implied. This is my subjective take on the world I find myself in. You and everything else that is, is in this world. As if this was my dream, and only that, my illusion. The sections are organised in a chaotic structure, as it is a task left to my monkey mind and reflecting the nature of it. The photos have been selected to illustrate something in the text, and sometimes, they match the moment I came up with the thoughts I am sharing with you.
Wandering and wandering off the roads and known paths started when I was a kid, and I was not allowed to ride my bike across the paved roads in Pinares. The area had no straight paths. It was a residential area, far from the busy centre of this seaside summer town. At least where I was, very close to the beach, the forest and the lake. I made it my sport to find creative ways to ride as far as possible. Without a map, without navigation, just me and my bike when I was 11. It was not about reaching anywhere, as I knew that paths ended somewhere, but due to the labyrinthical nature of the area’s trails, I wanted to know all of them, every path. Dead ends and all.
As I wrote this, it became clear to a certain degree that is the same I am doing with Scotland. I want to know it all. Know all the paths, and be aware of its geography. Build a complete 3D scan of the land in my head.
We don’t get to know everything in depth. Things change, and in the eternal flux of time, growth and decay are unavoidable. But just like a scholar, I acquired general knowledge of the subject and am now choosing my in-depth subject. Scotland.
People often ask me about the dangers of travelling alone, the loneliness, the skills necessary to succeed, the gear (in this case, usually middle-aged men), etc. The fact that I am a woman has played a significant role in this question; however, people tried to conceal or address it in such a way that I wouldn’t feel offended. But not always. Like my friend Alex, who was bewildered by the idea that I would go hiking alone wearing yoga leggings. Or Donate to whom I had to invent a schedule with hostels so she wouldn’t freak out with my “I’ll throw the tent somewhere when I feel like it is time to sleep” plan.
It is the exact things they feared or rejected that things that fill me with joy. Not knowing where I would sleep, not having a destination, not considering “the gaze” or how others see me, peeing when I needed to and with a view, carrying all the things I needed in my back. Specially curated life. As minimal as possible and as comfortable as I could afford.
While sitting in the first pub I ever sat in Inverness, some 5 years ago, I look outside to the snow-covered road. I do not have a car or know how to drive. Maybe by the end of these stories, I am about to tell you, I will have a driver’s license. I’ll let you know. But for now, I am bound to my two legs and my bike to roam the lochs, the glens and the mountains of Scotland. The snow must be amazing out there, in the Cairngorms. My friend in Cannich fears she’ll be snowed in this week. I wish I was there. I’ll share a detail… the first time I ever saw snow falling, was when I was 17 years old on my way to Bariloche with my high-school class. Until I moved to the Netherlands, I had no direct experience with snowing. And although I am not fond of cold weather, I fell in love with falling flakes. There is an eerie silence on a snowing afternoon, and the type of light coming from the bright, shining, frozen, watery fluff is magic, just like the white sand of the Western Isles beaches. Its whites and blues taking over the vision field forever.
Let me continue with what these stories will be. This is a book about moving, words and change. My interpretation of these concepts might be broader or narrower than yours. It might be that you had already thought the thoughts I thought and saw the things I saw, and nothing you see or read is new information to you. It might also be the case that something you read or see on these pages triggers something in you; even though the information is not new, it casts a different light on the structures of your thinking. Or it might be gibberish, nonsense, words without any meaning. Like the discourse of the Mad Hatter.
Whatever this book does for you, I am grateful if it does something. Combating numbness in a world of illusionary realities is a challenging job. One way or the other, most of us fall into a state of apathy at least once in our lives. The man-made world becomes easily predictable, routines, timetables, categorised, and organised in linear manners, forcing the flow and ebbs of nature to fit the limitation of our understanding.