I spent last weekend away from my family. I left the Spouse and the kids at home and headed north in my hiking boots. When I told people at church that I was going, the response was twofold: “Without the kids?” and “Good for you!” And often both responses delivered one after the other.
And it was good for me.
It was to be a weekend of three–me and two friends. We’ve been friends for years. We met as teenagers working together at a Presbyterian camp. I grew up going to that camp and happily graduated in time to staff status. J. had come from another camp to work, having found us on the internet, and the third of us, the English girl E., had fallen in our laps, pennies from heaven due to a family connection. She now lives in Sheffield, and we two Canadians living in London and far from home are delighted to have such a good friend on the same small island. We’d been planning this trio weekend ever since I arrived in the UK but, through bad luck and troubles, J. had to stay home and work, so we were only two. Still, I was keen to go. I wanted to see E. of course, and to see Sheffield again and to explore the Peak District. I needed some time to stretch my legs. Although you can walk miles in London, the crowds do slow one’s pace, and there isn’t much horizon to be seen at all.
On Saturday morning, the alarm went early, and it was entirely effort that got me out of bed. I tried not to think, just to let the body move and get going. The family partially roused themselves to give sleepy goodbyes, which was a good thing. (The Spouse and I had discussed the possible horrors he’d face in the morning from the children if I just vanished in the night.) They waved groggily out the window, still pyjamaed and wrapped in their quilts, and on their way back to bed.
I marched down to the station, shouldering my computer bag, crammed with a change of clothes, a spare pair of shoes, a flask of coffee, and some work to get done on the train. The train left from the nonsensically-named platform 0 just after 7 a.m., north past the waking streets and into the brightening countryside beyond. The light was poetic on the hills, and each town we passed through looked perfect that morning. I did manage to get a bit of work done, but perhaps the real work wasn’t typing away at this keyboard, but breathing in the space between home and away.
By the time I got to Sheffield, I was ready for walking. Or mainly ready. E. saw that I could stand a wee bit more fortification in the form of homemade fruitcake (fantastic) and tea (crucial), as she made up some sandwiches for our later al fresco lunch. Then, back in the car and away we went, off to the hills and beyond. W
e walked all day, through all kinds of terrain–marching up hillside tracks, scrambling up a rocky river (rather like reverse rapids, I thought, without the canoe), across a high, wet and peaty expanse where we got thoroughly muddy and proud of our (read: her) navigational skills, over a strange stony stretch with endless views in all directions, down hills and hills again into a green English (and I drove my English friend mad by using that as an adjective–but it was so … English!) valley, following the sheep down and down the road until we got to the pub at the end. Where, of course, we continued the now-years’ long conversation about life and God, love and changes, church and work, longing and where the green grass grows longest. It is good to have solid friends.
I’ve read of ministers who make a point of taking time away each year, a weekend or maybe a week, with a colleague from their seminary days. This kind of mini-sabbatical can be a time of reading and reflecting, sharing and talking and just blathering, too, I imagine. Professional development at its most vital. Maybe ex-camp counsellors like us need to take time to head for the hills together. Wilderness is necessary as a place to stretch, a place where you can see a long way. And old friends are like that, too. They remind you of who you were and who you are. They listen when you talk about everything and nothing. And they make you listen, too.
So, thanks for all the walking, E. It was wonderful and necessary, wasn’t it? As the poet Simon Armitage wrote, you never come back from a walk feeling worse.
And thanks, too, my Spouse, for making that break possible, and Beangirl and Blue, for being good while I was away.
Because mothers need sabbaticals, too.
