16/ How long-distance walking helps me learn about myself
It wasn’t so much life-changing as it was mindset-changing.
I stumbled (pun intended 👣) on long-distance walking purely by accident. My final year of university is when I truly started to know myself, what I genuinely enjoy, what I’m passionate about… the soul food, baby – the stuff that keeps me going.
I was often thinking about and researching seemingly random, cool stuff to do that seemed a little… “out there”. Stuff that made my parents look at me like I was trying to send them to an early grave.
I don’t remember how I found out about it anymore, but during one of these spates of “I need to do something active and fun and far away from here” after I’d left my first post-university job, I found out about the Camino de Santiago – the well-known pilgrimage that ends in the region of Galicia, in the city of Santiago de Compostela.
I was surprised I didn’t know of its existence since I’m part Galician on my mum’s side and we’d visited Santiago so many times. Years later, in 2019, I even found out that one of the routes used to go past my mum’s childhood home up in the mountains, our home away from home for many childhood summer holidays! I was literally standing on top of it this entire time yet somehow didn’t discover it until well into my early 20s.
I decided I would walk the popular Camino Frances route, partly because I needed to “detox” from spending too many long hours in a claustrophobic airless London office, being grinded down by countless hours wasted commuting day in, day out, and also trying to reignite an interest in photography which had been worn away.
I also thought it would be a nice way to explore this part of my heritage and family on my own. I always struggled with languages and was never able to pick up my family’s various languages, including Spanish – it’s always felt like something was missing because of that. I quietly hoped that this would be a good chance to fill that gap a little more, and learn more about myself in every way; ancestrally, creatively, mentally, physically. All of the illys.
It wasn’t so much life-changing as it was mindset-changing. I came back more grounded, more aware of nature and the earth around me, as well as my place in it. My relationship with nature became much more pronounced and began to really root into every aspect of my life: my passions, habits, hobbies, my business.
Not only that, it immediately became my favourite way to explore a place. For me, walking is the BEST way to explore a new place. There’s no other method of travel that allows you to experience a place so fully, in so much detail, and so close to the land.
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A bit about me
Hey! I’m Ameena – a freelance writer based in London. I love to tell stories about adventure, the outdoors, and our relationship with the natural world, and by night, I’m a portrait and documentary photographer.