Week 9

I read The Salt Path by Winn. She engages with walking in a way that’s way more intense than some of the other walking books we see. Instead of walking just to think introspectively, or to clear her head, her and her husband, Moth, are walking because they have no other choice. They lost their home, their money, and so the 630 mile trail they start becomes their 'home'. They do that to redefine their life away from the traditional homelessness they were about to experience. Winn makes us engage with the trail as a place of survival, talking about the pain and salt on their skin, the hunger, and the struggle of pitching their cheap tent. She engages walking by using it as an essential means, not a means to grow internally, but to get through an extremely difficult time in their life.

She also dramatizes the walk in how she tells the story in such a descriptive way. She didn't expect the walk would give them the experience it did, and her accounts of their life with Moth being sick during the walk also really dramatized it.  "But we were faced with the possibility that our life together was to be limited to a short time of moderately good health, followed by a decline into paralysis and death. I couldn't leave him and go to work. I needed to spend every minute of this precious semi-health with him. I had to save every memory to carry with me into a lonely future.” The focus of death accompanying them during their walk brings a more complex layer

of depth into the writing.


Walking is the only thing keeping them both from falling apart physically and mentally.


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