Sometimes, I just have to walk.

I get this slightly claustrophobic feeling in my own head. Noises from the outside seem louder than they should. My physical space seems impinged upon, whether it is or not. Of course an un-named child leaping from the van with all 100 lbs directly onto the toes of my left foot doesn’t help any, but I digress.

I don’t think I even broke my stride as I stepped over the rounded dune, out of my shoes and dropped my bag on the sand in one smooth motion, turning right and making for the fringe of an impossibly blue sea. Boys nipped at my heels like puppies. One stretched his legs and loped off in front of me, black hair tossing in the wind. This never worries me. I know that if I just keep walking, they will disappear into my wake.

Sometimes I just have to walk.

It’s how I sort my insides, and my outsides. 

I can’t tell you how many miles I’ve walked, talking myself out of the wrong things, and back into the right things. I walk until the wind blows the wrinkles out of my soul. I walk until my thoughts come into harmony with the rhythm of my steps. I walk until I draw my breath straight up out of the earth through the soles of my feet instead of that choked place just below my collar bone where it gets stuck sometimes. I walk until the fog passes and I can see myself clearly again. I walk until I know who I am.

Sometimes I have to walk a long way.

If I can, I walk barefoot. My friend says that this is because I’m not happy unless I’m physically connected to the earth, and the turmoil is created by the disconnect of shoes, cars and airplanes. I suspect he is right. Today the sand felt cool and hard beneath my feet as the waves gently curled around my ankles and pulled softly toward the blue green of the southernmost edge of the Indian Ocean. I walked. I hunted for shells, and I made a point of breathing. My mind swirled like the red algae in the breaking waves and I struggled to sift through it and find the clear blue again.

Sometimes, I have to walk past the footprints. I just have to keep going until there is nothing but uncharted territory ahead of me and no remaining path to be seen. It has almost nothing to do with the physical walking, and everything to do with the long walk through my head. I have to keep going. To get beyond everyone and everything that crowds my brain. I have to find a way to leave them all behind and walk until I am the only one left. I have to make my own path.

I found some things on the beach today: 

A couple of spirals from the center of conch shells, bleached white by the sun and polished smooth by the sand. They reminded me of the spiral of life, how I walk and walk and walk sometimes and find that I’m getting nowhere, only turning the same corners again and again.

A fishing lure: A shiny green rubber fish with a sharp hook protruding from its back. Recently lost by the look of the lack of rust on the hook. I picked it up remembering Ezra’s run in with a hook. It set me thinking about the things that lure me but that hurt like hell when I bite. Do you think a fish can ever learn not to take the bait? There was one that lived under a dock that I fished on lots who never seemed to give the lure a second look. We always thought we might catch him, he was the biggest, but we never did.

And then, I reached down and picked up something brand new. I’ve walked more beaches than I can count. I’ve collected shells and other treasures on every walk. It’s a special day when something completely unheard of finds me. It was this:

A piece of some sort of shell that I’ve never seen, living or dead. A gift from the sea gods just for me, complete with a hole to run a piece of leather through to hang it.

The inside is polished lavender pearl. The outside a rough pattern in my favourite shades of red. It’s broken, but it’s beautiful, like so much in this life. I smiled and showed it to the ghost who always walks with me.

It took me another half an hour to find the center of myself, much of it spent laying on a rock where the tide wash couldn’t quite reach me, feeling the tingly cool of the bubbles on the front edge of each wave splash my ankles. In a life filled with children and the constant meet and greet of a traveling life the thing I crave most is solitude and quiet aloneness. To find it…

Sometimes I just have to walk.