To digress a little, for me, I’ve never gone on any walk or journey with the explicit intention of finding answers, be they spiritual of otherwise. At least not since the first time I did so and realised life doesn’t work that way. Since then, rather than the journey itself being life-changing, most of my journeys have involved reflection on a life changing event that occurred to me around 40 years ago. I haven’t come back from any of those trips (and there have been many) with grand, definitive answers. Rather, with each trip, bit by bit I see aspects of the event more clearly. With age comes experience, and my perception of events back then has gradually changed over the years and decades, a bit like the cliché of peeling the onion.
But I’ve also learned that trips have a habit of turning out differently to what you planned, especially if your expectations are particularly focussed on it being this or that kind of experience. I went on a big mountaineering trip once, hugely focussed on (rather obviously) a summit, and ended up in one of the flattest places on earth. So for me, the bottom line is the adventure, the not knowing what will happen along the way, but that it will probably be a lot more interesting than sitting here at home.
