Stage 14: Casamari to Arpino

After the best night’s sleep I have had in a while, I was still rather exhausted. Today was a quiet, flat day in more ways than one, with the soundtrack of cars and guard dogs. The second half of the journey was more picturesque. Having arrived in Casamari under thunderclouds, they had cleared by the morning, helping to lighten the Roman walls. Sadly there was not much in the way of breakfast to be found, so I headed off knowing if I needed to I had a protein bar in my bag.

Whilst I was glad of a largely flatter walk today, it does leave a lot more space. 

One might expect the hardest part of a hike to be the steep endless inclinations, the praying you don’t mis-step, the trying to remember to breathe.

No. 

The hardest part is on the flat. You don’t need the walking poles, in fact they can be a nuisance, you don’t need to manage your posture for the weight distribution on your bag or pace the breathing. There is no challenge, there are no distractions. Which of course means that the mind reveals what occupies it the most, or the easiest thing to hand. This is rarely a state of calm and peace and being in the present, or even some profound thoughts, if only they were. No, they often reveal our character and where our love lies and where our anxieties are. It is rather uncomfortable to see what your mind does when left on its own, but there is nowhere to go with it. It is in the breaking down that one has to begin to build up again. 

I have found the same in life, when there is something to be done or got through, I seem to almost thrive. I find it clear and obvious what to pray for, to remind myself to trust God. Or when things are well it is easy to rejoice. It is the in-between times, the moments where nothing is wrong and nothing is brilliant, it just is. In these flat days, weeks, months, years even, it is easier to get lost, easier to miss the large noticeboards in the forest directing you where to go, as I had done earlier on this walk. When the sky is bland, and all is fine, it is then that it is hard to follow the course. The walking poles — those good habits we have built up — fall by the wayside, as we forget that we will need them again.

So the question remains, how to get through the flat? Perhaps in small acts of remembrance and thanksgiving each day.