The Salt Path and The Wild Silence

    

The Salt Path and The Wild Silence, Raynor Winn

These two British-published non-fiction books by Raynor Winn are about her experience of becoming homeless in her (I’m guessing) 50’s along with her husband, Moth. Their adult children have left the farm and some sort of catastrophic financial deal involving a traitorous friend of the parents results in the foreclosure of their farm and the loss of most of their possessions in 2013. 

At the same time Moth is diagnosed with CBD, corticobasal degeneration, a rare neuro-degenerative disorder that shows up in loss of physical and mental ability: difficulty walking, short-term memory problems, difficulty controlling muscles of the face and mouth, and progressive difficulty speaking and comprehending. Doctors advise Moth that he appears to have had the disease for 6 years and that he has maybe 2 years left to live. They tell him to not over-exert himself or walk too far and to be careful on stairs. All this is a devastating diagnosis for a former active outdoor adventurer.

Ray and Moth are at their wits' end, trying to figure out what to do, homeless and nearly penniless. Their history together is one of outdoor activities, so they decide to walk. Specifically, they set their sight on the South West Coast Path, England’s longest way-marked footpath and a National Trail. The SWCP starts in Somerset, heads southwest through North Devon towards Cornwall, rounds the point at Land’s End and then heads east along the coast of Cornwall and South Devon ending at Poole Harbour in Dorset, 630 miles (1014 km) altogether, with a total elevation change of 114,931 ft. (35,031m). Unlike myself and many others on these long walks who overnight in country inns, pubs and B and B’s, Ray and Moth decide to wild camp, carrying their own tent, sleeping bags and cooking gear.

The experience of this walk makes up a large part of The Salt Path. The going is tough, especially at first when Moth can barely move his body to get up every morning. Ray is overcome with guilt. Has she asked too much of him?

Before long though, they get their second wind. They don’t push themselves too hard and take rests when necessary. Moth begins to feel stronger. By the time they finish the walk, many months later he has changed from a near-invalid to a man with energy and strength. His mind is clearer and the future seems a bit brighter for them both. So much for that medical advice! They are offered an old chapel to rent in Cornwall which they gratefully accept and Moth decides to go back to school to qualify as a teacher.

In The Wild Silence we learn that Ray’s first book, The Salt Path has been published and how it came to be. It is a wonderful surprise that this first book has hit a chord with people around the world. I was able to access The Salt Path by e-book on the Ontario Library Download Service and of course, I loved it. I recently purchased The Wild Silence as an e-book.

In The Wild Silence we struggle with Ray and Moth over Moth’s still-declining health and with their decision about how and where to live. Raynor Winn is a gifted writer whose descriptions colour every page.

The Wild Silence opens on the dawn of New Year’s Day:

All the revellers, fireworks and noise of the night before had disappeared. A dark stillness had returned, broken only by pools of streetlight and the sense of the river moving, wide and deep near its mouth, but heaving inland with the force of the tide, the surface shattering into a thousand reflected lights. Only one boat was moored in the fast-running current, its bows straining on the anchor chain, its stern drifting in a rhythmic fishtail motion.

A random person, Sam, who has read The Salt Path, feels inspired to look them up and offer them the opportunity to stay at a farm he owns but doesn’t occupy in Devon. Would they live there and help him achieve his dream of re-wilding the property and renewing the apple orchard with an eye to eventual cider-production?

Re-wilding is a term referring to letting land return to its natural state with help – the planting of native trees and plants, letting hedges and pastureland become rich with diverse plants and wildflowers and allowing grazing stock time-limited access in contained pastures, a strategy which provides needed fertilization and soil break-up without draining it of all its nutrients. The pastureland is then given plenty of recovery time before livestock is reintroduced. The plan, though controversial, is popular and successful in many areas of the UK and I’ve noticed Canadian farmers becoming interested.

Ray and Moth think at first that Sam’s offer might be too good to be true and are not sure they’re up for the job but, encouraged when Sam’s wife joins him in his enthusiasm for them to take on the project, they move to Devon. The work starts as they begin to clear out the house and barn and cut away the excess growth of years of neglect.

With Moth being more active again, his health improves somewhat and they decide to try another walk, shorter this time and they travel with friends they met on the SWCP to Iceland to walk the formidable Laugavegur Trail over a week or so, wild-camping along the way. The remainder of The Wild Silence takes us day-by-day on the Trail through the volcanic Icelandic landscape.

    

  

I could put my finger on any page in either book and it would land on the most exquisite descriptive language. Here’s a passage from the fourth day of their Icelandic walk:

The flat top of the escarpment was disconnected from the neighbouring mountain. A high cliff face of red chevrons of rock forced up by huge tectonic uplifts was separated from where we stood by a cavernous ravine where a river rolled and boiled far below. It was as if we stood on a column that had just risen from the earth. A white sea bird spread its wings and glided on the air currents above the river. As I watched it rise high on the wind across the cliff face, stark against the black and red rock, I realized it was the first bird I’d seen since passing a group of whimbrels near the coast while on the bus to the lava head in Landmannalaugar. I watched the fulmar glide in the distance, following the ravine and the river away to the south. All that was left was the roaring, wild silence of an empty land without vegetation or animal life. A heaving, crashing chasm of noise and movement, overlaid by a veneer of stillness.

And this early morning in Baldvinsskali:

I got up. In the darkness of the early hours I crept over the bodies, picked up a coat and went outside. The wind had dropped to a whisper and on the far eastern horizon a slither of pink wove between the dark grey gaps in the clouds, lighting the glacier tips in hints of faintest blue. The silence was total. The complete silence of an earth at its beginning. Or its end. Even in the warmth of a stranger’s parka, I felt this was no place for human or animal and that the world went on without either. The pink light spread through the grey, not time passing, just light changing.

I think Raynor Winn might be a painter as well as an author. I absolutely loved these two books although, sadly, there were no photos, at least not in the e-version. The above photos and maps were mined from the internet.