I’m walking the End-to-End this year, which means I’m walking 1500 miles from Land’s End in Cornwall across the British Isles to John ‘O Groats in Scotland, also referred to as LEJOG. This has been swirling around in my head for five or six years, and I realized if I was going to do it, I should start telling people out loud as that would confirm the commitment. That worked and seven months ago I started seriously planning. Since then I have submerged myself in guidebooks, blogs, websites, memoirs, and the most consistent piece of advice is to be clear about why you’re doing this, and have a ready answer because people will ask. My purpose in taking off on what is coming to feel more like a personal pilgrimage than a trek really comes down to the inspiration of three people. My dad: While I don’t remember a specific conversation when he told me about the End-to-End, I do have recollections of him telling me about it when he shared his story of walking home to London from Wales at 14 having been sent there for safety from German bombs in 1939. He was not pleased, and took it upon himself to walk back along lanes and through farms till he returned home. I had the sense this journey ignited a desire to head out on the famed long distance pathways of England, but one he never realized. With this anecdote and in so many other ways, my dad imbued me with curiosity and appreciation for how the landscapes of England have inspired so many beautiful literary, musical, and visual creations. Jane Fonda: surprising, I realize. A few years ago I started feeling all existential in that ‘the end was near’ and I wasn’t feeling particularly healthy. Then I read an interview with Jane (I feel like I can use her first name now after reading her memoir and almost every interview she’s given in the last 20 years. I’m obsessed.) At 60 she realized she had a whole third of her life left, a third act as she described it, and there was much to do to better prepare for this robust, important stage. This excited me about the promise and responsibility of living life beyond my 60th birthday. About the same time the third influence entered my life in my new friend M: a beautiful, vibrant, funny, engaged and active 95-year-old. I decided I wasn’t equipped sufficiently in body, mind or spirit for the wonderful decades still ahead, and I needed a project to motivate myself. I thought what better way to get in form than walking the hills and valleys across England, Wales and Scotland?!
I love history. I love learning about people over generations, how lives are lived, how people have migrated at our human pace. I wanted to walk this history across the British landscape. This love of history has resulted in a recent and surprising purpose for this walk: to reconcile the pride and joy in my British ancestry I’ve felt most of my life with the sadness, anger and shame I feel from learning about and understanding the great advantages I’ve had from my English heritage. A recent trip to Ireland exposed much ugliness in England’s history, an exhibit on the slave trade at the FitzWilliam museum in Cambridge informed the truth of England’s wealth, as well as many other books, movies , artwork, and current events have made it impossible to ignore the horrors of this legacy. I know it’s more complicated than that, and along with the colonial privilege I’ve inherited there is also much beauty, ingenuity, and wonderful history of Great Britain. I’m setting off on this walk to contemplate and settle this great complexity within myself. I will have much time to think, opportunities to hear stories, and miles of land to feel under my feet. I doubt I’ll resolve it completely, but the attempt to intimately connect with this island by spending everyday for 4 months walking across her has to help.
Well, there are the reasons I’m walking. This has been the hardest, most confusing trip I’ve ever planned, and I’m expecting most of those plans to fall apart. I’m just hoping my body doesn’t fall apart while I navigate the twists & turns of this journey. I’m leaving soon and I think I’m mostly ready. I will try to keep this blog up as much as I can. I’ve had many internal debates and chats with friends about if I should keep a record of what I’m doing, why would I keep a record of what I’m doing? How do I keep a record of what I’m doing? Do I share it? How do I share it? Enough people have told me that I’m going to want a record of it over the years and other people have said they want to follow along with me so here’s my attempt. Many of you have supported me already on this endeavor and I really could not be more grateful. I’m very nervous about this thing, and I’m very excited and happy about it. We’ll see how it goes.
