Back on the trail - Trappeto to Scopello, and Bill the walker

1/4 - Trappeto to Scopello - 19.02 miles

My return to Trappeto felt like reentering an alternate universe. I was the only passenger to get off the two-car train, and found the tiny station completely deserted, just beginning to warm up in the early morning sunshine. I powered on the ol' trusty GPS, waited as it came out of its hibernation to find itself right where it left off twelve days before, and with a grunt under the weight of my backpack, found the forward momentum I needed to resume the journey.

I truly had not expected to find myself still walking in 2009, already over the 1500 miles I had conservatively but arbitrarily allotted myself, but it was impossible to find a reason to complain. I was in a particularly beautiful chunk of Sicily, the sun was out, I had all day to walk, and I was doing exactly what I wanted to do, and near the completion of a goal I had set for myself a long time ago. Yes, my spirits were high, the wind was at my back, and even the landscape cooperated, offering up one of the most beautiful stretches of fields and rolling hills that I had so far encountered.

So I walked, savoring and reflecting on one of the last days, watching the world awaken from its lazy Sunday slumber, and it was in this state of mind that I met Bill. Bill had started in Marsala, my ending point, and was planning to saunter along my path, ending up in Napoli by Spring. However, I could see Bill was doing things a little differently. He had rigged an old threadbare bag with hand-sewn reinforcements, had a second, smaller backpack around his chest, and was carrying two large plastic bags. In other words, he had all the trappings of a hobo, the kind I would have crossed the street to avoid in any other circumstance, but who I quickly saluted and approached, having identified him as a fellow walker.

An Englishman from Manchester, Bill had decided to become a real traveler eight years ago, and had walked, biked, hitchhiked, and ridden trains all over Southern Europe. When he ran out of money, he returned to the UK, worked odd jobs (the latest was in construction) until he had saved the minimum to leave, and then took off. He slept in abandoned buildings or tucked away in various corners, foraged in supermarket garbage bins for recently discarded food, went to charity centers whenever he found them, and was progressing at around ten miles per day. So it was that with 500€ he planned to walk six months, until the weather in the UK became bearable again.

Bill used a large, semi-rusted tin can to cook meals (it's lightweight, he boasted, and I thought back on the fancy miracle-metal all-purpose lightweight pan that I had jettisoned back in August), had crafted a guitar from twine, baling wire, and a 2x4 ("just add an empty plastic bottle for the sound cavity and it makes pretty good music"), and was toting around 30 kilos (66 pounds, compared to my 35) altogether.

Absolutely crazy, you say. But the most ticklish part of it all was that he wasn't. He shared his disappointment that his mother and sister never asked what he was doing, never took interest in his stories and what he had learned. He praised walking for the complete freedom and control of time it afforded him (sound familiar?). And when I asked him to name the most important thing he had learned in eight years of traveling, he looked off wistfully into the expanse of blue to his right, and said: "every ripple, every drop of the water that we see has been organized that way by a higher power, and that higher power has never ceased to look after me and keep me from harm. I believe that we are placed here on Earth to live as closely in harmony as we can with that higher power, and that is why I continue to walk." Amen, Bill.

We shook hands, I gave him a small gift that had been given to me, and as I walked away, I thought long and hard about Bill's choices, and whether I had done my walk the right way. The first sensation I felt was envy: Bill was doing it the old fashioned way, the way of the true traveler, relying on luck and ingenuity, and above all, Providence to see the world. I thought about all my fancy, store-bought gear and felt so foolish, so plastic and helpless, knowing that I would never be that kind of traveler. Bill's freedom was absolute, concrete, while mine was purchased with money and on borrowed time.

Then I thought about the inherent trade off of Bill's travel style, that of breaking contact with society. Once you gain absolute freedom, you are no longer constrained by society, true, but nor can you reenter it without giving up a portion of that freedom. This is, in essence, the social contract, and a man like Bill had torn his up along the path. While I was certainly skirting society's fringes,looking in with an outsider's perspective, I was never fully out, either. Yes, people stared and sometimes turned their backs on me, but they also welcomed me into their homes, shared their lives and hopes and stories with me, and taught me about their culture. This social contact, as I hope you will agree, is one of the most attractive and fulfilling parts of a journey such as this one, and it was the realization of its importance that ultimately quelled my sense of envy. They were different adventures, mine and Bill's, but I had chosen the one I wanted, and did not regret the consequences.