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Tuesday 11 September 2012

The River Severn

and here I am again.

A different me.  A new post.

Hectic times are here again.

I'm walking again.  Down a river.  Following it as it swells and winds.  Down the trail, through brambles and over stiles.  Past sleeping cows and curious sheep.  Eating blackberries and elder.  All the way to Bristol, where hospital awaits again.

Did I think I'd come here?  Did I think I'd be the same?  Do I even know who I am At All?

Mindfulness helps but sometimes it can eclipse the bigger picture altogether.  I don't know what I'm doing.  Only that I've decided to walk 210 miles to hospital and 130 back home again.  Why?  Because it was there.

I look at rivers on maps and see targets, I've realised.  I see a journey, a beginning, an end, a change in the middle, a tale in the spinning, something achieveable...given time.

Time and workable hips.  Functional knees.  Unbruised shoulders. 
Sharp shootings of pain are infesting much of me below the pelvis.
Not suprising; I just walked out of my front door and went to walk to sea.  Even with or without cancer I was never physically fit.  Just tough.  And determined.  Those will get you a long way, but the fight is harder.

Next year, I say.  Next year I'll take a sleeping mat.  I'll take a bivvy bag.  A sleeping bag liner.  I'll change my socks every day.  I'll get a new rucksack.  I'll cycle all winter until my leg muscles grow enough to carry me all the way round Wales.  All the way from Bristol to Bristol, day by day by day.

I am a hobo again.  With regular breaks every 4 days for a bed and a shower.  I am walking hundreds of miles, to hospital and back because I will not be affected, long term, by a cancer diagnosis.  It's gone.  I remain.