71
" ... we were us, every second of us, a long-marinated stew or life's ingredients. We were everything we wanted to be and everything we didn't. And we were free, free to be all those things, and stronger because of them. Skin on longed-for skin, life could wait, time could wait, death could wait. This second in the millions of seconds was the only one, the only one that we could live in. I was home, there was nothing left to search for, he was my home. "
― Raynor Winn , The Salt Path
73
" Sitting on our packs, dripping. Mid-September and it felt as if autumn had arrived. We could have stopped, but we had nothing to lose and everything to walk for. We were free here, battered by the elements, hungry, tired, cold, but free. Free to walk on or not, to stop or not. Not camping out with friends or family, being a burden, becoming an irritation, wearing friendship away to just tolerance. Here we were still in control of our life, of our own outcomes, our own destiny. The water ran from our rucksacks as we put them on our backs. We chose to walk and seized the freedom that came with that choice. "
― Raynor Winn , The Salt Path
76
" Having left the previously heavily dredged area for a few years, marine life has been slow to return, allowing the Welsh Asssembly to conclude that a sandy underwater desert is the natural state of our cosatal waters. But along with the scallops, the metal claws have ripped out all the sea life: mussels, anemones, sea fans, sponges, seaweeds, all manner of fish, a marine world that cannot recover in a handful of years, but will take decades, centuries even. The exact marine life that dolphin mothers feed on when their calves are young and slow moving. "
― Raynor Winn , The Salt Path
80
" faintly, in the far, far distance, Hartland Point. It was impossible to think that we were the same people who had stood at Hartland Point, with its bunting café; less still the broken shells that had stepped off the bus in Minehead. And before that? Out of reach, too far away now, our home had drifted out of range. It existed, but the distance made it untouchable. The raw, jagged, visceral pain of loss had gone, but the memory of it was still there, if I closed my eyes and let it come. It wasn’t at Godrevy though; it had been left on another headland, the pain was only in the echo. "
― Raynor Winn , The Salt Path