(Day 17 – Mogro > Ribadesella – 16 July 2025 – 108 km, 1500 m)
This was clear before I departed, but each day it becomes clearer: instancy is a stealthy trap, an almost imperceptible self-imposed prison, a hell I easily and often overlook on account of its ubiquity. The sun hitting the sea, the kids building creative and precarious sandcastles, the paddlers stretching, families picnicking, the novel I am reading and the breathtaking places I sometimes stop to read it, I don’t want to share it all on Instagram. I don’t want to take photos for my couple dozen followers, write for my even fewer readers, let myself be doped or duped by likes on social media. I don’t want to be slave to messaging apps and the ‘check now, answer now, solve now, react now,’ sensation I’ve developed to all the messages that come in. I don’t want to scroll news sites. I fight the messaging immediacy that pokes at me when I stop for a break along the way. I fight the social immediacy that descends after I reach my destination and rinse the day’s dirt off. I fight the information immediacy that forms fanged shadows on the hotel walls.
What is patently clear is that I fight. And that the fight takes place when I am not moving.
So is movement my flight? Is this why I have sought out repetition since as long as I can remember (songs in loop, cycling legs, swimming arms, electronic dance music, running legs, laser-focused writing, mantras)? Am I flying or fleeing?
thewanderingbee.earth 