Solitude on a long walk is inevitable.

Loneliness, isolation, remoteness,seclusion,retirement,withdrawl, purdah, privacy, peace, desolation. Wilderness, backwoods, emptiness, wasteland, far away.

So all of these take over at sometime. One’s head can embrace them or fight them – this state of of solitary confinement is not necessarily a challenge to this physical or mental state of mind.

Walking with donkeys and with up to fifteen people is sometimes noisy, a clatter of a voyage as a unit, a bringing together of similar people wanting to make the same journey for many different reasons. This means conversations, remarks, arguments, discussions, jokes and the dreaded banter. There were times when I headed farther up the way or slowed down to be behind. Three days I travelled alone, outwith the group, making my own bivouac and not talking,  gathering my thoughts, sketching, photographing or just plain walking ‘un pied apres un autre’ . At first I was scared to set off alone, nervous from leaving the comfort and confines of the Caravane,  my companions along the route. It was then that I discovered  a solace in solitude, the capacity and need to be alone. And it was good!

The self realisation of being able to involve oneself with one’s work.

As Rainer Maria Rilke said;

‘You should not let yourself be confused in your solitude by the fact there is something in you that wants more of it…

We know little, but that we trust in, what is difficult is a certainty that will never abandon us: it is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult, that something is difficult must be the reason for us to do it.’

 

I surmise that this is the same for all our practices.


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