A few days after I found my “new” walking boots, I was looking through my book collection for something to read. I say collection, it's not that large, perhaps two to three hundred books. It is mainly the ones that have survived various culls over the years. Books that I have read, or unlikely to read, I often give to charity shops.
Books can take up a lot of space. When I was a young boy, I lived near a couple of neighbours who had large book collections, all in book cases that covered the walls of a room in their house. Between them, they could have opened a bookshop. I wondered if I would ever have the same, not a bookshop, but a house with a room or a study with lots of books. The answer has turned out to be no. The books I have tended to be housed in different places, some stored away, hidden away. Occasionally I would remember to go and look at them and pick one to read.
This time I settled for one that had been sitting in a pile of books for some time. It was in used condition and I had probably picked it up at a charity shop or car boot sale. It was something that I had looked at many times and put down, never quite being in the mood to read. It was a book by Cheryl Strayed called Wild. Part memoir and part travel adventure, it tells of her journey to walk the Pacific Coast Trail. I thought to myself, it's about time I read this, or at least a few chapters to see if it is worth reading. I can usually tell after two or three chapters if a book has got me interested, and I really want to read more.
I am partial to reading books by those who have faced a major challenge in life and done something different. The risk of adventure and taking a chance, the not knowing of what will happen next and the trust that you have to believe that everything will turn out alright. In the past, such stories were mainly told by book, today they are just as likely, perhaps more so, to be found on YouTube. I probably spend far too much time than I should watching the videos of adventurers like Eva zu Beck, van lifers and those who have chosen an alternative lifestyle, but I have admiration for what they have done.
Anyway, I settled down to read the book. Wild starts with a prologue. It's not something that you see that often in books these days, at least not the ones that I read. The prologue to Wild was only a few pages long, but it stood out straight away for me as she tells the story of how she loses one of her walking boots. Having lost it over a cliff edge, she then throws the other one away. Both boots gone, you are then drawn into the story to see how she coped walking barefoot, or did she? I would have to read on to find out.
As I read the prologue I quickly realised that of all the books I could have chosen to read, I had picked this one out and the first pages tell of a lost pair of boots. Having just found a pair of decent walking boots that looked like they had been thrown away, I couldn't help but think, how strange life can be.
To be continued…
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