A walk with my mother

by Deirbhile Maguire (Ireland)

I didn't expect to find Spain

Travelling allows you the opportunity to live a different life. You always come back carrying the dust of another place, another life on your shoes. I think that is why most people love to travel, the chance to expand the part of the self that gets lost in ‘real-time’. Bob Harrison once wrote that, “a shark in a fish tank will grow 8 inches, but in the ocean it will grow to 8 feet or more. The shark will never outgrow its environment and the same is true about you”. As a writer, an artist, or a photographer - we capture lives, lived experiences. It is our duty to expand ourselves and our view of the world to inform our work. So much can be learned from Orwell’s street inhabitants on the Rue du Coq D’Or and Robert Capa’s D-Day landing shots. I did not expect to find that one of my happiest experiences was drinking a gin and tonic down a butchers’ alley in Zubiri with my mum. My family are regular walkers of the Camino de Santiago. Last year my mum and I decided it was our turn after a challenging year. We began our journey from St Jean Pied du Port to Pamplona in four days staying in a mixture of refugios (hostels) and private rooms for our own sanity. We set off on one of the wettest days of the spring and were completely drenched while climbing up the Pyrenees. And yet, by the end of our meal in Refuge Orisson, we were completely hooked. People have special experiences on the Camino. But I believe it is the love of travelling that makes it so special. Yi-Fu Tuan wrote about that sacred connection to space and it is present in the true traveller. Something between place and memory merges and creates a new entity. A sacredness for that place. My dad has it for The Arlington Cinema in Santa Barbara, where he first saw Indiana Jones. I have felt it in many different spots: sitting on the side of a boat touring the islands near Phi Phi with my friends, our legs hanging over the deck, swimming in the phosphorescence in Nantucket on my J1, sitting at Café de Flore people watching on the Saint-Germain Boulevard. It is that moment of stillness, of contentedness, that truly makes a travel venture an experience. An immersion. When I walk, my brain slows down and I am forced to observe. It gives you time. That is what I search for when I travel. It was our third day of walking and the sun had warmed our damp bones. We had walked the same trail as Hemingway had from Burguete that day. We cast off our bags in search of a nice drink to finish off the day. There was a square within 200 metres of our hostel mostly cast in shadow from the afternoon sun, deciding that we would walk no further that day, we entered the bar. I have had many gin and tonics in my life, this one cost myself and my mother a total of two euro twenty cents each and it was served in a tumbler glass. One word. Perfect. It was cold, it was light, it had a good kick to it and a nice chunk of lime. We did not speak. We just pulled the white plastic chairs to the last pocket of sun down an alley that ran next to the square. We sat, our legs outstretched and closed our eyes letting the sunlight warm our faces as the butchers carried their produce back and forth as they shut down for the day. I am always carrying the dust off my shoes from that trip.