An unexpected friendship was a breath of fresh air after my turbulent city life
Much is said about walking the road less travelled. There’s joy in the unexpected and the unravelling of, well, who knows what. Just over a year ago, I left my London life for rural Wales. I saw it as not a desirable but a necessary pause in what had become a turbulent life. The previous six years had been full of turmoil, death, subsequent grief and estrangement. Before my big move, I ran away for a month to New York, to spend time on my own. I spent the days writing and watching a blur of people rotate in the world as I tried to find my place in it. I had become deeply sad.
Walking has never been my thing, but there’s no point in being in the countryside if you’re not going to try it out. So I bought a pair of expensive walking boots and made it my goal to put one foot in front of the other. Which is how I came to meet Wilf, a farmer in his 70s. Most days when I would go out I would see him tending to his sheep. It was a wholesome sight, a shepherd with his flock. There was something eternal about it, a man toiling the earth, as if this one scope held all of eternity. It made everything else look so starkly ephemeral.