45
" An old man carefully laid out a towel close by, then methodically took off every stitch of clothing and lay very precisely on the towel. There was something close to tortoise-like about the naked old man, wrinkling, drooping as if his old skin was sliding away, soon to reveal a pink, exposed, smooth new body. I had to stare. We hide ourselves so well, exposing our skin in youth when it has nothing to say, but the other skin, with the record of time and event, the truth of life, we rarely show. "
― Raynor Winn , The Salt Path
53
" The country towered above me, a blank empty space containing nothing for us. Only one thing was real, more real to me now than the past that we’d lost or the future we didn’t have: if I put one foot in front of the other, the path would move me forward and a strip of dirt, often no more than a foot wide, had become home. It wasn’t just the chill in the air, the lowering of the sun’s horizon, the heaviness of the dew or the lack of urgency in the birds’ calls, but 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. Burned in by the sun, driven in by the storm. 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 grown stronger with every headland. "
― Raynor Winn , The Salt Path
60
" Time and again, foul things attacked me …’ ” ’ He closed the book. ‘So that’s it for today, folks, thank you to Seamus Heaney and Beowulf, and thanks for listening.’ And they were clapping, and clapping. ‘Well done, a great tribute, he would have been proud.’ One of the old men was shaking Moth’s hand. ‘Hope he’s looking down on the festival this week.’ ‘Sorry, remind me, when did he go? I’ve been walking, lost track of things.’ ‘Two weeks ago. A perfect, perfect tribute, thank you.’ The crowd dispersed and I shoved the hat under my fleece. ‘I didn’t know he’d died. I feel such a disrespectful tit.’ ‘I don’t think he’d mind. Probably would have made him laugh.’ ‘We should go. Did you hear that about a licence?’ Back at the quiet end of the harbour we "
― Raynor Winn , The Salt Path