Sun and sea, cliffs, pine trees, flowers…

Sun­day, the 02.03.2025

To­day is Sun­day, my rest day. I’m stay­ing in a beau­tiful ca­bin on the ‘Ponta da Ata­laia’ in Al­je­zur, in the south-west of Por­tu­gal. A dream­like cliff land­scape lies at my feet with the sound of the sea, blue skies and sunshine.

I have just un­der a week in Por­tu­gal and 92.4 ki­lo­me­t­res of wal­king to the north be­hind me, in­clu­ding two days of tra­vel­ling and four days of hi­king, around 22 km a day. Lots of pic­tures, lots of peo­ple, lots of thoughts – that’s how the first few days went. The ruck­sack was too heavy, 2.7kg sent home by post on the first day in Faro. The daily hike, fol­lo­wed by a stop for re­fresh­ments and a com­plete emp­ty­ing of the ruck­sack very quickly made it clear what had been touched and what was un­neces­sary. But – half a year is a long time… Who knows what’s to come.

To­day I ac­tually ex­pe­ri­en­ced a glim­pse of ‘now’: clea­ning a pan and just be­ing. No thoughts, no ques­ti­ons, no li­near time­line of ‘What do I have to do first, when and where, re­mem­ber, don’t for­get to do it, do it by …’? That’s exactly what I want most of all. To be like that.

So enorm­ously beautiful

The ‘Fisherman’s Path’, the ‘His­to­ri­cal Path’ and a few cir­cu­lar hi­king trails that are sum­ma­ri­sed in the so-cal­led ‘Rota Vi­cen­tina’ are now my route and my daily walk. Mostly along the co­ast, but of­ten a few ki­lo­me­t­res in­land, in na­tu­ral he­ath­land and small sec­tions of fo­rest – all in all a large na­ture re­serve. It would be quite dif­fi­cult wi­t­hout al­pine ex­pe­ri­ence or, as in my case, wi­t­hout cou­rage: I don’t have po­les yet, but I of­ten had to climb and crawl up scree, hold on to plants or stones and be a bit brave, not look to the left, test each foot­step slowly and not take any mo­men­tum. Be­cause the ruck­sack is re­la­tively heavy and would other­wise give me a se­cond swing – then pos­si­bly a third down to the left, where the cliffs and the sea lie… In this way, some 200 – 250 me­t­res up and down had to be over­come in 50 – 100 me­t­res. And mostly the sea on the left, high wa­ves, strong wind. Thin­king not­hing but ‘Slowly, El­len, very slowly and even more slowly’. I start to come to terms with the earth be­neath me and love my good Mi­che­lin so­les un­der my Vivo Bare­foot hi­king boots.

Du­ring these days, I meet many hi­kers, most of them from Ger­man-spea­king areas, but also a few from the Czech Re­pu­blic, Slo­va­kia, the Ne­t­her­lands, the USA and France. I spend two days wal­king tog­e­ther with C., a Ger­man wo­man my age, who is very close to home. We walk tog­e­ther, we eat tog­e­ther, once we even hap­pened to stay tog­e­ther in pri­vate ac­com­mo­da­tion. I am gra­teful to be able to talk to her at the be­gin­ning of my long hike. It’s easy to have both deep and shal­low con­ver­sa­ti­ons with her, to laugh and to be si­lent when na­ture is so in­cre­di­bly beau­tiful. Tog­e­ther we are of­ten speechl­ess and talk just as much about how we never thought we would find such un­spoilt na­ture, be­a­ches, cliffs and the sea in Eu­rope. Wi­t­hout di­rect tou­rism, wi­t­hout roads, wi­t­hout cars. Unbelievable.

It has rai­ned a lot in this part of the coun­try over the last week – which is ap­pro­priate for the sea­son. We have to take se­ve­ral de­tours be­cause di­rect paths by the sea are not ac­ces­si­ble. The risk of lands­li­des has de­fi­ni­tely dam­pened my ap­pe­tite for ex­pe­ri­men­ta­tion, so we have to take more re­mote paths along the co­ast. Nevert­hel­ess, in two of the many val­leys we walk up and down, we don’t cross a floo­ded stream. We coll­ect stones and build a crossing. It’s nice when things flow so ea­sily, I thank her and life for brin­ging us tog­e­ther so briefly and nicely.

In­ter­nal contact

Du­ring these days, I keep fee­ling a tiny bit that I am co­ming back to mys­elf. Gra­du­ally, layer by layer, is­land by is­land, a kind of sense of self re­turns, as if from a kind of an­aes­the­sia. How long had it been gone?

Since the be­gin­ning of this laye­red ‘awa­ke­ning from an­aes­the­sia’, a thought has oc­ca­sio­nally ap­peared in the back of my mind and then di­s­ap­peared again. How is it pos­si­ble to re­tain my sense of self, my pre­sence, in my ‘nor­mal ab­nor­mal’ world? Why and when does it get lost? And do other peo­ple bes­i­des me feel the same way or am I not mas­te­ring so­me­thing that is ne­ces­sary in our society?

With these thoughts in mind, I am now en­te­ring the se­cond week. The sun is shi­ning, the sea and the birds are cal­ling me. The pine trees and flowers are fra­grant. I greet you from afar and wish you a won­derful start to the week!