Seven months ago, I sat on a craggy promontory overlooking the Atlantic Ocean in Northwest Spain, a place once thought to be the westernmost point in the world. It was the conclusion of a long walk, a transition to a second walk, but it most appropriately marks the prequel to this third. The waves were wild that day, crashing into the cliffs with reckless abandon, but my gaze drifted ever outward, straining the limits of the horizon, aware of the futility of spotting what lay on the other side, but persisting nonetheless. Having reached the eastern edge of the Atlantic, I would now travel to its western shore, setting forth from there in pursuit of its oceanic sibling, the Pacific.
Fast forward those seven months and, at long last, I fulfilled the easy half of that promise today. After departing Portland at 11pm last night, I touched down in Charlotte at 7am this morning, connecting onward to tiny Salisbury Airport a few hours later in an equivalently diminutive plane. My head scraped the ceiling; all of our carry-ons were loaded underneath, via “valet” service. It cut swiftly through the sky, though, finding a clear blue layer between two gray strata of clouds, and delivered me to Salisbury a half-hour earlier than expected.
I was joined in Salisbury by Fritz, a Camino vet and photo-journalist, who will be accompanying me at different points on the walk, documenting some of the moments along the way. He watched as I paced erratically, jumping from topic to topic with little coherence. All of the patience I had demonstrated in the weeks leading to this moment, all of the ease with which I managed the final days of preparation, had suddenly evaporated, and I was left with a wobbly urgency. There was nothing to be done, however; the taxi would arrive as scheduled and that was that.
We were fortunate, though, to be gifted a wonderfully loquacious taxi driver, who had both hands firmly planted on both the wheel and the conversation, keeping us moving from topic to topic for the full hour of the drive. He loves ziplines and hates stomach cramps; he admires Uber’s boldness and condemns their business practices; he once drove a woman with nine cats from Burlington, Vermont back to Maryland.
And finally, he dropped us at Cape Henlopen State Park, after some awkward navigation that employed a liberal approach to one-way streets. Fritz and I hustled to don our raingear, as a steady rain whipped around us, and then descended the boardwalk to the coast. We climbed up between two buildings–snack stands and restrooms in the summer, shuttered and abandoned today, like the rest of the park–and saw the ocean suddenly appear. No craggy cliffs this time, no dramatic waves. If anything, the scene was surprisingly calm, with gentle waves lapping a largely untouched beach. It was all ours.
Beginnings are not like endings. When one concludes something valued, something important, there’s a palpable desire to hold on, to cling to every moment. We squeezed every last drop of daylight out of that final day in Spain, knowing that once we stood to depart, the endgame would implacably unfold. By contrast, beginnings are inherently in motion. The cannonball is loaded. The fuse is lit. Any restraint, any patience, is to be measured in seconds, not minutes, and certainly not hours. Nonetheless, I did my best. I gave my waterproof shoes an excellent test, allowing waves to wash over them. I ran my fingers through the wet sand, rubbing loose grains from my palms, back from which they came. I led Fritz on a scenic detour, before we doubled back and found the footpath that brought us past the first American Discovery Trail waymark of the walk.
And then, we were off and running, following a wide, paved pedestrian and bicycle track nearly the full five kilometers between Cape Henlopen and Lewes. The first day’s walk was practically over before we knew it, prolonged only by a bridge turned sideways, and thus closed to through traffic. So it goes sometimes.
The town of Lewes is pleasant, with a building that dates to the 17th century, and many others that span multiple centuries. It also feels largely abandoned, with most of the seasonal crowds still months away. Nonetheless, we were the beneficiaries of some wonderful hospitality by a pair of local couples, both of whom I was connected with through the podcast. They hosted us for dinner and, look, when you get a photojournalist, a state public services administrator, a culinary historian, a mechanical engineer, and a rocket scientist all together at a table–not to mention four pilgrimage vets–you know you’re going to have a good time.
Tomorrow brings the first full day of walking, though it’s still a bit shorter than what will be typical later on.
