Spots of Time

The reasons behind why people decide to walk the Chemin de Saint Jacques de Compostelle (or the Camino) are diverse. The rich trails of lives, loves, and crises make for moving, often heartbreaking evenings in these quiet corners of France. Eyes sparkle, sometimes hiding with a downward glance; or like the intake before the dive, deep breaths are taken before deep words spoken; and silence… the silence as the words slowly crystallize… the beautiful silence that can only be between people who trust and are prepared to wait respectfully. They are beautiful moments, yet juxtaposed against these star-lit conversations are the often staggeringly beautiful days spent wandering through landscapes both grand and humble. Days where a little rock fall can be as moving as a mighty valley, or where a small leaf covered in droplets glinting like jewels in the morning light can be as enchanting as a green-lit forest heady beneath the midday sun.

Small moments, deep moments; moments define our experience of the world. We remember them like pictures or movies, and call upon them as we have need later in our lives. This is something Wordsworth knew about, despite his often clumsy, childlike articulations of the wonder and beauty of the natural world (which I find quite lovely). Himself a keen walker, old Willy thought that the problem with the industrialised, urbanised world was that, nice as all the ‘stuff’ it produces is, its cities are essentially bad for our souls. Nature, Wordsworth argued, was “sane, pure and permanent” and within it we could find experiences that might help us through amid the hectic bustle and aggro-anonymity of city life. They were small moments, ‘spots of time’ he called them:

There are in our existence spots of time,
That with distinct pre-eminence retain
A renovating virtue, whence – depressed
By false opinion and contentious thought,
Or aught of heavier or more deadly weight,
In trivial occupations, and the round
Of ordinary intercourse – our minds
Are nourished and invisibly repaired;
A virtue, by which pleasure is enhanced,
That penetrates, enables us to mount,
When high, more high, and lifts us up when fallen.

These spots of time, these small, tender moments are what people will carry away with them. It is, they hope, a rejuvenating time – re-creational leave. Perhaps, in moments of despair with upturned head they might spot a small leaf glinting in the light, and remember a small moment in a quiet corner of France.