Day 25. An old story, a new story.

Saturday, 7 November 2015, Argeles-sur-mer

I woke up in a damp field, packed my things together and walked. Then I a saw the bird, a hoopoe. It flew up from the ground and landed on a branch. Another one was flying around, just like last week when I had also seen two of them, completely unexpected.

Straight away I thought about Felieke, Jan and Felix, who had given me the assignment when I was on another long walk from Amsterdam to Marseille 2 years ago, to look for the hoopoe. They had never seen it and neither did I on that walk but that specific day I thought about them and about the hoopoe and when I found myself in a small room by the end of the day with a map on the wall with all the bird species from the region listed and portrayed, the hoopoe in my imagination became real.

Today again I realise all the walks are really one and the same walk. Every time there are the same people walking with me because they got connected to things, events, landscapes. They aren´t there continuously, sometimes I am really on my own but when I see a hoopoe, suddenly my friends from Norway are there, when I watch the stars at night I am accompanied by somebody I never met but who has been sending me words and images since my first long walk and who is an amateur astrologist. The other day I ate cactus fruits and was joined by a friend from Barcelona who loves flowers and plants and from whom I adopted a cactus last year. And when I think about giving up, my father joins me and I smile and continue.
New people get added as well, when I walk difficult trails and climb over rocks, a recent friend from Girona is there to remind me of the way of the goat. Even though I usually only hear my own footsteps, I am in good company always.

Here is the hoopoe story from two years ago: http://www.asoftarmour.blogspot.fr/2013/09/day-31-walking-with-felieke-jan-and.html