The Way Is The Goal

Author: robino (Page 8 of 28)

Recap Portugal Trip

Oh Portugal. How much I loved hitching, cycling and hiking on your roads, your dunes, and cliffs. Wild nature, and wonderful people. Amazing hospitality and what an experience to do all this without money! Just going around the bars and restaurants asking for left-overs, and many times the food would just appear right in front of me. Eating fruits of trees and finding veggies all along my path, and people inviting me over.

From North to South, literally from the furthest border to the most opposite side, by walking and hitching and staying over in Vila Nova de Cerveira, Viana do Castelo, Porto, Espinho, Mira, Coimbra, Talasnal, Tomar, Lisboa, Seixal, Alcácer do Sal, Carvalhal, Sines, Porto Covo, Vila Nova de Millfontes, Almograve, Odemira, Zambujeira, Azenha, Odeceixe, Rogil, Aljezur, Sagres, Salema, Lagos, Silves, Benafim, Vilamoura,  São Brás de Alportel, Tavira and Vila Real de Santo António.

Highlights are numerous, and I am still writing my stories. But one of my personal favourites was Vila Nova de Millfontes, the second town on my unplanned hiking trail. I arrived in the morning, after walking for 6 hours by moonlight over the highest dunes I had ever seen. Coffee and breakfast was given by a nursery, and lunch was provided by some Bulgarians with a restaurant. But my path was blocked by a river and the bridge was far, and I wanted to cross in a more traditional fashion. So I decided to wait at the harbor for a local to bring me across by boat, which happened, without much waiting involved. His ex-wife was Dutch, and so he liked me. My first time hitching on a boat!

robokow

Recapping my experience, I finally had time to publish my photos. Not all of them, as I lost half of my photo-collection after being deprived from my computer, money and phone in the beginning of my way. But that reality was not as bitter as it may appear, as that triggered a set of events that changed my perspective on life tremendously. Ah, where life brings you when you simply surrender and trust!

Water is Life

I am on a raft in a river going through a jungle. We’re heading to the sea. I can’t tell what’s behind the next curve, if the water will go faster or slower. If there are more rivers or if the pace remains the same. All I know is that I am, in the water.

Sometimes I want to go faster, and then I actually find it holding me back. The faster I want, the slower I move. And sometimes when I desire to go slower, the water hurries me faster.

Other boats come on my path from separate rivers. Some surfboards, small motorboats and others are like gigantic castles with protection all over. I overpass these bigger boats quickly, no matter the engines they carry. They are too heavy for the water to be carried by the river.

Some boats I see together, others collide, with people drowning or just able to swim. Others again find new boats, abandoning ship, loosing identity and their original path. How will they make it to the sea?

I feel a boat close to me, bumping from the back. I try slowing down but the water lets me go, and faster I flow.

We pull up ropes and bind ourselves together. Why I don’t know. For safety it is not. As the water lets us go faster, a waterfall approaches and I can’t avoid to jump: I have to get off my raft!

Looking for cover, I swim closer to the shore, holding on to branches which sometimes slap my face and I climb over slippery rocks that make me fall when I want to get up. A wave comes in and the water dumps me into a swamp, where mud is all over and everything gets stuck.

But then I understand this is where I am to be. That this is part of the path that sets me free. That a pause is only a different movement, and a stop equally an action. And a new current comes in, bringing me into the stream.

I find my raft, together we go through showers of rain, into mist, and later when it all clears I notice a boat in front, hindering some of my sight. But I also notice we are yet again floating towards the sea.

A bird lands on my shoulder and whispers: “Go slow, don’t hurry yourself down. The sea is yet far, and is not where you are supposed to be. Be free and feel your raft as if you were one. Let yourself float, enjoy the streams and sail towards the sea”.

For a second there I wish for wings to fly me over the sea, just like the bird. What? Am I really so much enslaved to being free? And I find the answer enclosed within the question, and I just let myself and the river be.

Always Furthur

(hibernation-mode)

Silence. I am here to understand what is coming, instead of thinking where I should be running. Seeing the so-called endless possibilities, ideas spread in me like fire… but I hold on to sitting still. Silence, you bring what no word can!

Inside. I travel to far away places with a body that remains seated. To places I have been before, but deeper we go. I let the space surround me and I fill it with invisible motion, letting thoughts witter away.

By myself in a house that many came to refer to as casa. A home that is centered around people and one that indeed made lots of movement. A space that now is empty of people, a space that now fills me differently, with silence.

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