The Wintering Sessions: Raynor Winn on losing everything and finding home
Hello,
To celebrate the launch of Raynor Winn’s latest book, Landlines, here’s a special *updated* edition of one of the first Wintering Sessions.
While I was in Cornwall a few weeks ago, I caught up with Raynor to ask her about her new book, and you can hear our conversation in the introduction to this episode.
Raynor captured a multitude of hearts with her book, The Salt Path, which recounts the time she lost her home just as her husband received a terminal diagnosis. With nothing to lose, they set off to walk the South West Coast Path carrying nothing but a tent.
Here Raynor reflects on that transformative time that redefined the meaning of home - and gives a welcome update on Moth’s health. When I saw him in August, I’m pleased to report that he looked very well indeed.
I adored talking to Raynor about our shared love of the South West Coast Path, as I always do.
References from this episode:
Other episodes you might enjoy:
Season 2: Josie George on the joy of small things
Season 3: Ross Gay on delight
Warmest wishes,
Katherine
Note: this email includes affiliate links which means I will receive a small commission for any purchases made
From the transcript
Raynor Winn:
Each headland that you manage to get up is a battle won and it becomes your entire focus. And I think that empties your head in lot of ways. And it stops you thinking, because life becomes really immediate. It becomes about, really literally, about that next step. And I think that in itself has the ability to allow your brain to calm. It allows the panic to subside and something far more elemental to take over. And I think the salvation was in that actually.
Katherine May:
Yeah. I can imagine how it would be incredibly comforting. I mean, it puts you back into contact with survival in a different way to the way that we understand it in an everyday sense. You really do feel like you're battling the elements. But there was for me, this feeling, which I think is exactly what you're describing. And I always thought that that was because I was walking alone most of the time. But obviously it happens when you're walking with someone else too, that maybe a few hours in every day, my mind would go into this incredibly quiet space where there weren't even any words left anymore. It was just, yeah, I was just walking. I was just existing and that, I think, is a very difficult place to get to in any other way.
Raynor Winn:
I think you're right. I think that's why I describe it like a meditation because that's what you are looking for when you meditate, don't you? So I think that's that element of complete disconnection from everything, but in that emptiness, anything can come can't it? Anything can come. And I think because after hours, you just stop, you stop thinking. As you say, you stop thinking, you stop considering anything and you just be. And there's an incredible sense of release in that.
Katherine May:
Yeah. I always say that I would never have come to my autism diagnosis if I hadn't been doing those walks. It opened up a kind of forum in my mind where I could accept a completely new idea about myself and I needed to get past my conscious self to get there. It opened me to new possibilities.
Raynor Winn:
I think we'd taken away everything material, more or less everything financial. All the day-to-day ordinary problems of life had gone with that as well. So we weren't concerned about had we paid the council tax or did we need a new wheel on the van. All of that was gone and our lives had gone to a far more, just a mode of survival really. And it was down to a really basic base level of food, shelter, water, warmth, those being the only things that we needed to concern ourselves about.
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All artwork by Iveta Vaicule
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