Trying to walk

 
I don’t want to deceive you. I am not really out there walking. I am in a small house about 5 kilometers from Figueres, just outside the village of Camallera, in the Nau Côclea residency. I will spend 18 days here, staying inside and walking through the internet every day, imagining I am really on the walk I will make for real in August and September, accompanied by different people daily. There will be two stories of the same walk, both real in different ways, both walked in different ways.

There is a word that looks similar in the Spanish and English language. Pretender. I embroidered it on the walking suit I wore for a year in 2015, the year I decided to have Barcelona as my base. In English it means “to pretend”. In Spanish it means “to try”.

The route I walk now is the same route I will be walking in summer. I am using the information from webcams, other peoples’ blogs and Facebook, wheather forecast sites, Google Earth, websites about places we will visit for real, anything I can find online. And I will use my imagination. That will be the most important source.

What is real? What is reality? What does it mean when we say we “walk through”? What is walking? I hope to touch upon all these questions in the next 18 days. And I am curious how the two stories of a similar walk done in different ways will overlap, touch upon each other, differ.

I will spend every day in the next 18 days as many hours as the “real’ walk is expected to take online, walking there as if I am walking through the real world. I will start every day at the time we will start walking on the corresponding day in summer. I will write a story of the walk every evening.

Let’s see what happens. And you are very welcome to walk with me. Here in the next 18 days and from Queralbs to the Montserrat mountains (or any stretch of that road) in August/September.