Footprints: Memoirs of My Steps on Earth

May the only mark I leave be my footprints.

If you want to clear your mind, lend your focus to your feet.

It was a hot, blue skied Saturday in September 2023 when I wandered into the cobblestoned street of Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port with an abundance of sports tape around my knees. My first steps on El Camino de Santiago. I knew that the end was 800 kilometres away and not much else. By the time I reached it, I felt like an entirely different person. Walking had changed everything. It was no longer a mundane, everyday action but a meditation, the simplicity of it second nature.

Since then, hiking has melded itself into my identity. What a privilege it is to know the exhaustion of days spent wandering in fresh air, to know the aches of tired muscles that carry me to the corners of Earth where roads do not reach; to know this form of freedom.

What follows are three accounts of some memorable days on foot, from the hills of Northern Spain to the scree slopes of New Zealand. It is because of days like these that I truly understand what it means to be alive.

O Cebreiro, Spain - October 2023

The incline feels ferocious. Water pools in muddy pits beneath rocks and fallen branches. My feet drown in my shoes. Jadd is ahead, he glances back, black hood drooping over his eyes. I pretend I’m not tired as he turns and bounds away. I think he might be superhuman.

Today I am twenty, drenched in rain and sweat on the side of a Galician mountain. Last night was spent drinking copious amounts of sangria and vermut but I feel remarkably okay. Tom is close behind, a humble, wooden wizard stick in hand. He bought me a piece of chocolate cake in the last town, a stranger only days ago.

I push forward, the scars of golf ball sized blisters rub against my sodden Hokas. I have walked for twenty-seven days now; I will walk for five more. Santiago de Compostela waits for me. Joy dances in my chest. The air is electric and life feels so big.

We reach O Cebreiro in the early afternoon, pallozas on a hilltop backed by a clouded wall of grey. I see Arthur sheltering with his back pressed against damp bricks. He looks like he needs a cigarette.

Tonight's alburgue smells of wet socks and crowded bodies. The showers have no doors. I am too cold to care.

Sleep washes over me on a blue plastic mattress. My bed is in the centre of fifty bunks, the room ambient with a chorus of snores. Footsteps cross my dreams, leaving my teenage years behind. This has been my most momentous birthday yet.

Birthday companions. Londoners in the wild.

Ōhau, New Zealand - February 2024

Summertime at six pm. It’s the beginning of my weekend and there are approximately four hours of daylight left. I charge uphill into the backcountry, golden speargrass draws blood across my bare skin. I follow Georgie, who follows Joe, who follows his instincts with the occasional help of Topo50. They are fitter than me. My pack feels mountainous and I am out of my depth. It’s my first time wild camping and overnight tramping. I don’t tell them though, I don’t say much at all for fear of sounding like a panting dog.

We set up camp by a small lake. The clouds look like spaceships and Joe says it means wind is coming. We eat dinner on the grass, Live Well by Palace plays in the dark:

Sundown

Ever so slow now

Remind me I'm a free man

Freer than I've been

The wind does come, angry and relentless. I wake up smothered by the side of the tent. It was only made for two people but the three of us managed to fit, squished like sardines lying top-to-toe. I met them only days ago. It’s as if the fabric around us has sprouted wings. I think Kotryna will never let me borrow anything again.

In the morning, we scramble up a never ending scree slope. I put a brief pause on questioning my life choices when we finally reach the top. The valley below looks otherworldly, harsh and bare and beautiful. I wish to see this version of earth all the time. I hope humans never dare to change it.

All air flees my lungs as we cross the ridge. I have never felt wind with such power. It batters me with a force so brutal that tears fly from my eyes and continue like bullets. I press onwards, step by step. It feels as if the oxygen is being swept away. I squint into the horizon. Everything out here is so expansive. I am freer than I’ve ever been.

Joe, Georgie & the Great Blue Abyss.

Routeburn Track, New Zealand - January 2025

Darkness envelopes me, broken only by the weak light of my phone. Water roars somewhere nearby, it is deafening. I shrink beneath the bodies of trees, their branches reaching for me, blocking the stars. A possum snarls as I pass by. I am tired beyond delirium. After nineteen hours on trail, I have nothing left but adrenaline, feet pounding the forest floor in a rhythm of desperation. Who do I think I am?

I watched a Youtube video last night of an elite runner completing the Routeburn end to end each way in nine hours. So, naturally, after spending the best part of three months on my arse, I assumed I could finish it in twelve. I went to sleep at one, woke up at three and decided to test that notion. Ambition is a bitch.

The first thirty-two kilometres were pure magic. I crossed the Harris Saddle at seven a.m, clouds breaking ahead of me. The sun touched my skin and I swear I was soaring. Lake Mackenzie gleamed below, all the shades of Fiordland vivacious in the morning light.

At kilometre fifty-something the sun fell behind far away peaks. Reaching the Harris Saddle once again, a Kea cried out as the sky turned pink. I descended quickly, thirteen kilometres to go, the light fading fast. Stopping for a second as the mountains bloomed around me I noted that I was a tiny speck among the them, solitary on an endless ridge. My body was air, my blood a stream; I was the epitome of peace… Until both of my headlamps died.

I cross the final bridge to the car park, my mind conjures horror stories of lone girls in the woods at night. For the first time, I am grateful to see my little shit box of a Toyota.

My legs seize as I reach home. It is one in the morning. The stairs to my room are harder than the 2500 metres of elevation of the day. Bloodshot eyes stare back at me in the mirror, a salt flaked face of pure exhaustion. I eat a wheel of brie cheese in bed as the mattress swallows me whole

The final ascent. Lake Mackenzie in the evening hue.

Through the tiresome aches and wonders of the world encountered in memories like these, I understand myself a little more.

When I walk, I reach a new reality. I am the legs that carry me. I am the ground beneath my feet. I am present. The river laughs and the trees whisper, the grass dances and I witness it all. Life flows, slowly.

Walking is simple, taken for granted after the excitement of a child’s first steps. But it is in the fundamentals of walking that we find the fundamentals of life:

Continue forward, one foot in front of the other, one step at a time. Move as slowly as you need to. Rest if you need to. Persist. Bask in the freedom of the moment. Put your trust in yourself and know that you will get there in the end.

With this, I have learned, you can do anything.

I owe everything to this version of myself. Her footsteps started it all.

I hope I can walk forever, until I reach the end of Earth, and when that time comes, may the only mark I leave behind be my footprints.