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Raynor Winn QUOTES

Raynor Winn QUOTES

1 " Six thirty and I could hear the gulls coming and going over the cliff and the now familiar early-morning battle with boots and tent flaps took far too long. As soon as I stood up I was overwhelmed. Not only by the desire to sit on a white, shiny, flushing toilet, but mainly by a wave of vertigo. Somehow in the dark and fog of the night before we had pitched the tent two meters from the edge of the cliff. Tent, path, scrap of grass, hundred-meter-drop. I regained my balance and looked for somewhere slightly disguised. All I could see was an open hillside with a small clump of gorse bushes. There was no waiting; it would have to do. I frantically tried to dig a hole with the heel of my boot - we hadn't carried a trowel for this, far too much weight and anyway we'd always find a public toilet. My thumb ripped through the waist of my leggings in the rush as I squatted behind the spikey sharp gorse with as much relief as Renton in 'Trainspotting'...
'Morning. You found somewhere to camp then? "

― Raynor Winn , The Salt Path

2 " Give time for what you know you must do and you will have what you desire the most. "

― Raynor Winn , The Salt Path

3 " Don’t let her deceive you; she looks slow, but if I turn my head, puff, she’s gone. Then I have to get the lettuce out and sit and wait; eventually she’ll smell it and come to it, but it can take hours. "

― Raynor Winn , The Salt Path

4 " How good a wave is depends on what nature’s doing. It starts to pick up when the wind blows on the water, way out at sea, then it’s all down to how strong that wind is, how long it blows for and how far it travels across the water – we call that the fetch. A big wind, a long fetch, a good stretch of coastline and you’ve got it, you’re barrelling. "

― Raynor Winn , The Salt Path

5 " We lay in the tent at the edge of Lyme Regis, on a patch of grass between the lobster pots and the chalets, and let death in. "

― Raynor Winn , The Salt Path

6 " There’s talk of them clear-felling the forest; the purists want to return it to indigenous heath, like it would have been in Thomas Hardy’s day… But the pines have been here for so long. They’re as much a part of the landscape now a the old woods are. I know it’s too dark for much life in here, but there’s buzzrds, they nest here every year, and foxes, badgers, woodcock, and sloe worms and adders in the heath at the edge and in the clearings. Where will the buzzards go? It’s their home. "

― Raynor Winn , The Salt Path

7 " Living with a death sentence, having no idea when it will be enacted, is to straddle a void. Every word or gesture, every breath of wind or drop of rain matters to a painful degree. "

― Raynor Winn , The Salt Path

8 " If we hadn’t done this there’d always have been things we wouldn't have known, a part of ourselves we wouldn't have found, resilience we didn't know we had. "

― Raynor Winn , The Salt Path

9 " Had I seen enough things? When I could no longer see them, would I remember them, and would just the memory be enough to fill me up and make me whole?... Could anyone ever have enough memories? "

― Raynor Winn , The Salt Path

10 " I wasn't living my life; I was just existing in someone else's. "

― Raynor Winn , The Salt Path

11 " Most people go through their whole lives without answering their own questions: What am I, what do I have within me? The big stuff. What a waste. "

― Raynor Winn , The Salt Path

12 " The lady set off, in search of summers long past, always just around the next corner. On a basic level, maybe all of us on the path were the same; perhaps we were all looking for something. Looking back, looking forward or just looking for something that was missing. Drawn to the edge, a strip of wilderness where we could be free to let the answers come, or not, to find a way of accepting life, our life, whatever that was. Were we searching this narrow margin between the land and the sea for another way of being, becoming edgelanders along the way. Stuck between one world and the next. Walking a thin line between tame and wild, lost and found, life and death. At the edge of existence. "

― Raynor Winn , The Salt Path

13 " I was home, there was nothing left to search for, he was my home "

― Raynor Winn , The Salt Path

14 " On a basic level, maybe all of us on the path were the same; perhaps we were all looking for something. Looking back, looking forward, or just looking for something that was missing. Drawn to the edge, a strip of wilderness where we could be free to let the answers come, or not, to find a way of accepting life, our life, whatever that was. Were we searching this narrow margin between the land and sea for another way of being, becoming edgelanders along the way? Stuck between one world and the next. Walking a thin line between tame and wild, lost and found, life and death. At the edge of existence. "

― Raynor Winn , The Salt Path

15 " When you tell a story, the first person you must convince is yourself; if you can make yourself believe it's true, then everyone else will follow. "

― Raynor Winn , The Salt Path

16 " It's touched you, it's written all over you: you've felt the hand of nature. It won't ever leave you now; you're salted...People fight the elements, the weather, especially here, but when it's touched you, when you let it be, you're never the same again. Good luck, wherever your path takes you. "

― Raynor Winn , The Salt Path

17 " Something in me was changing season too. I was no longer striving, fighting to change the unchangeable, not clenching in anxiety at the life we’d been unable to hold on to, or angry at an authoritarian system too bureaucratic to see the truth. A new season had crept into me, a softer season of acceptance. Burnt in by the sun, driven in by the storms. I could feel the sky, the earth, the water and revel in being part of the elements without a chasm of pain opening at the thought of the loss of our place within it all. I was a part of the whole. I didn’t need to own a patch of land to make that so. 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 core of me wasn’t lost. Translucent, elusive, but there and growing stronger with every headland. "

― Raynor Winn , The Salt Path

18 " Does it take a time of crisis for us to see the plight of the homeless? Must they be escaping a war zone to be in need? As a people, can we only respond to need if we perceive it to be valid? "

― Raynor Winn , The Salt Path

19 " Maybe ageing really is all in the mind. Possibly the best way to defy it isn't though expensive serums, endless hours at the gym and overly sharp scalpels, but simply by trusting our bodies to be strong and capable as they ever were, being in the wild outdoors whenever we can and not spending too long looking in the mirror. "

― Raynor Winn , The Wild Silence

20 " I was a part of the whole. I didn’t need to own a patch of land to make that so. 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 core of me wasn’t lost. Translucent, elusive, but there and growing stronger "

― Raynor Winn , The Salt Path