Going solo

“Many things frightened me as I made my way from the Channel through France, over the Alps in Switzerland, and across northern Italy to Rome.” Many would agree with writer Lea Page that undertaking a 1,000-mile walk across Europe is a daunting prospect. But undertaking such a journey as a solo woman would surely be more scary. Which begs the question: why put yourself in that situation? The obvious answer being: why shouldn’t she? Why, as a woman with the ambition to complete a challenge, should she be intimidated by potential threats and cowered by the world? As Page writes: “There is, I learned, a difference between being afraid and being unsafe”. She employed some coping strategies and learned to harness her fears, some rational and some not. And the reason she undertakes such journeys? “As a woman and a mother, it is rare to only have to consider what I want and need without having to first attend to so many other people.” She concludes by saying that the reason she goes on these long walks is “to pay better attention, to be more in the present moment, to take the risk that, by being more open to the world, it will, in turn, be more open to me.”