The Salt Path A Memoir

Ein Paar, das Anfang 50 innerhalb kürzester Zeit sein Haus, seine gesamten Ersparnisse und seine Arbeit verliert und dann auch noch erfährt, dass der männliche Part der Beziehung an einer degenerativen Krankheit leidet, die ihn voraussichtlich nur noch einige Jahre (mit Schmerzen) am Leben lassen wird, mag denken, dass es am Ende des Weges angekommen ist. Die Autorin Raynor Winn und deren Mann Moth allerdings wagen in all ihrer Verzweiflung und Hoffnungslosigkeit als "verzweifelte Obdachlose" den Schritt in die Freiheit...ganz im Sinne der Zeile "Freedom's just another word for nothing have to lose" aus einem Song von Janis Joplin. Ergreifend, bewegend, tiefgründig, aufbauend, ästhetisch und lustig schreibt Raynor Winn in THE SALTPATH die "kleinen" Erfolge, herben Niederlagen, Erkenntnisse, Verzweiflungen,..., die das liebende Paar auf seinem beschwerlichen Weg durch Süd-West-England (entlang des South West Coast Path) erlebt. Ihr Weg führt sie zweifelsohne zu einem tieferen Verstehen. Und das Buch zeigt, das wahre Liebe und die Kraft der Natur und der Hoffnung Berge versetzen können.

(Vorab eine Anmerkung: Das Buch erscheint am 14. Mai 2019 in deutscher Übersetzung bei Dumont.) This is an achingly beautiful story, and even more so since it’s based on real life events. I kept having to remind myself that it wasn’t actually fiction; it reads just as smoothly as a novel, is very poetic, and is just as craftily constructed. Ray and her husband Moth, in their early fifties, are no dropouts who decide one day to quit their jobs and go off on a hike. They lose their dream, which they have worked very hard for all their lives, a lovely little farm in Wales, their family home (their daughter and son are “safe” at uni), their beloved animals, and then the rest of their savings over legal disputes and mistakes made under stress. It happens way too often that the law is far removed from justice. They find themselves homeless as well as penniless, but rather than going through the humiliation of having to file for social welfare, they decide to rough it and walk the famous coastal path, literally on a shoestring. An act of desperation, since Moth is newly diagnosed with a terminal illness. “Only one thing was real, more real to me now than the past that we’d lost or the future we didn’t have: if I put one foot in front of another, the path would move me forward and a strip of dirt, often no more than a foot wide, had become home.” It turns out to be a journey of extremes as they go from being parched to being drenched, burnt by the sun and freezing cold, and always hungry. The story is told from Ray’s point of view, and there is in fact very little coming from pain-riddled Moth, but the man is an admirable stoic. It’s amazing how Ray is keeping her humour, very rarely giving in to self-pity, although she feels that she must be living someone else’s life. “Everything we’d ever worked for or towards in our long years together was gone … the memories drained, worthless, because it was all gone.” It’s a fight, and they’re fighting very bravely. Together. They may have nothing, they have lost any “closed, safe sense of security”, spiralling down, but at the same time they have everything: they have each other, without any doubt. They hold on to each other. They truly are the loves of each other’s lives: “I was home, there was nothing left to search for, he was my home.” Needless to say, “nature” plays a big role in this book, as well as something that Ray may call “geology porn.” “I could stand in the wind and I was the wind, the rain, the sea; it was all me, and I was nothing within it.” “The sun was setting, lighting the sky in late July tones of gentle southern colour. The land ahead turned blue in the falling shadows and the lagoon fell silent, birdlife fading away as the water receded without wave or motion, leaving only channelled streams in the muddy sand.”

Für mich nicht mehr inspirierend, nachdem ich im Observer und im Guardian die Wahrheit las. Die Frau ist fast schon pathologisch unehrlich. Den Salt Path sind sie und ihr Mann aber gegangen und die Geschichte ist tatsächlich gut geschrieben.