Approximately twenty-five years ago, columnist Dirk-Jan Scheffers discovered the joy of walking, together with his friend Simon. Today, he looks back on that time wistfully, for several reasons.
On holiday, I love travelling the place I’m visiting – as long as I travel slowly. Hiking or cycling on holiday makes for a clear itinerary; you start at point A and want to go to point B. All you have to do is make sure you have food and drink with you. Perhaps you can stop on the way to see the sights.
My love for hiking started with the romantic notion that it might be nice to hike a long, historic route. When I was still doing my PhD, I once stayed with the parents of my good friend Simon. On their bookshelf, I saw some books about the route to Santiago de Compostella, which his mother had hiked. I expressed my interest. Simon liked idea as well, and we decided to hike the route together.
After a few training hikes (we were completely inexperienced), we found out that the Netherlands are quite beautiful as well, but other than that, we were completely unprepared when we travelled to Spain by bus and by train in October of 1999. We nearly missed the last bus to our departure point in the Pyrenees Mountains because it was leaving from the estacion, and we were waiting at the train station.
We hardly spoke any Spanish, and we’d left all our warm clothes at home because we didn’t want to carry too much weight. Besides, how cold could it be in Spain in October?
Finding a payphone to tell home that you were still going in the right direction was enough
We quickly joined a group of Spanish people roughly our age with whom we managed to communicate, albeit barely. On day four, Simon developed a large blister on his toe. A local man treated it with herbs, calling it ‘Una gran ampolla’. During dinner, Simon forgot the ‘am’ and was telling people he had a ‘gran polla’. After everyone had stopped laughing, we found out that we had learned both the words for blister and penis that day.
Fortunately, we quickly learned how to ask for directions, as well as the Spanish words for bar, shop, bakery, and gloves. We didn’t have a cell phone and smart phones hadn’t been invented yet; finding a payphone once a week and calling home to tell people you were still going in the right direction was enough.
After a little over a month of hiking, we arrived in Santiago to find out that the journey is indeed more important than the destination. The trip taught me to be more relaxed about life. Simon and I became best friends instead of just good friends, and enjoyed many more hikes together.
A month ago, Simon suffered a cerebral haemorrhage, and he died a week later. In his famous poem ‘Caminante, no hay camino’ (‘Traveller, there is no road’), Spanish poet Antonio Machado wrote about the path you make while you travel and which, looking back, you’ll never travel again. And although I am grateful to be looking back at such a wonderful path, it breaks my heart that I can no longer look forward.
DIRK-JAN SCHEFFERS