post-trip blues

Perhaps it's a bad idea to travel so close to the beginning of the new academic year. Not only do I have to deal with post-trip blues but also with pre-semester anxiety. Last night I had a nightmare (I'm sure partly induced by the fact that I was trying unsuccessfully to convince my body that it was the middle of the night and not eight a.m.) that a woman who lived across the street from me while growing up decided I was an incompetent teacher and staged a coup on my classes. lisa b. appeared in the dream; when I told her how I had handled the situation (basically yelling "give me my fucking class back" to the woman who'd staged the coup) she told me--with a chuckle--that I had responded "exactly wrong." oh well, hopefully tomorrow will be coup-free.

England was excellent. I think we picked the right balance of camping and B&Bing. Just when we were tired and smelly, we had a B&B waiting for us. And while I occasionally was annoyed by my heavy back (especially when we passed the hikers with their small daypacks), my favorite part of the trip was the night we spent camping on the hillside of a small farm. We had an amazing view of another hillside and a river valley. Here's something of what our view looked like, although this certainly doesn't do it justice.



Hiking in the Cotswolds made me think about why I hike. At home, most of the places I go to can't be reached by car, so the walking makes practical sense. But in England, we walked in a variety of environments (woods, hilltops, fields, city streets, golf courses) and roads were never very far away. As the B&B owner in our second to last city reminded us before our final 15 mile walk to Cheltenham, there was also a bus that went directly there. On the way home, I started reading a book about a man who walked through Afghanistan just after the war. People kept laughing at him, telling him to just take a car. Walking from town to town made me realize how big the world really is. We shrink it in so many ways with fast transportation and global markets/ culture, but it's really quite stunning in its immensity. When you take a day to make a journey that you might have made in a matter of minutes, everything feels slower, farther away, more significant. In the walking, you find details. And walking, we were able to meet people that we wouldn't have if we'd been going by car or bus. The woman in Hawkesbury Upton who called at us from across the street just to hear about our journey and to make sure we had enough water. The pub owner who offered us tips on shortcuts. The various people who went out of their way to guide us through the trail's confusing city paths. It was certainly a trip worth taking.

Anyway, here's one more picture--just me on the trail.


And Terra, my fab travelling companion (and long-time friend):