Drink and Drugs News DDN November 2019 (1) | Page 16

REVIEW
WALKING BACK TO
HAPPINESS
Mark Reid on two books that consider
the restorative power of walking
The Salt Path
by Raynor Winn,
Penguin, paperback, £9.99
In Praise of Walking
by Shane O’Mara,
Penguin, hardback, £16.99
16 • DRINK AND DRUGS NEWS • NOVEMBER 2019
IN THE SALT PATH, Ray(nor) Winn
and Moth, her husband of 32 years,
are devastated. They’ve lost the
house and farm they’d owned for
over two decades and where they’d
brought up their children. They’re
evicted when they lose a legal battle
and are liable for debts after an
ill-advised investment with a once-
close friend. Moth has also just been
diagnosed with a life-shortening
brain condition. And yet they set out
to walk England’s 630-mile South
West Coast Path, with just £47 per
week in tax credits to live on.
At first, and for a long stretch
of the walk, Ray can’t stop thinking
of all they had to leave behind, and
her sense of loss is colossal. Lost,
they shout and argue about all
their ‘wrong decisions’. Gradually
– despite being ‘battered by the
elements, hungry and cold’ – they
adjust, and going for a swim in the
sea becomes ‘an oasis of clarity,
clear water, tide-rippled sand, free
from time.’ Moth feels much better
and comes off the pregabalin
prescribed for his aches and pains.
They wonder if it’s because they
keep moving and ask, ‘the huge
wash of oxygen, can it somehow
affect the brain?’
Shane O’Mara is a professor
of neuroscience at Trinity College
Dublin, and his In Praise of Walking
takes us through the evolution
and mechanics of walking, which
he hails as ‘an astounding neuro-
musculoskeletal achievement’.
Among the many mental health
benefits established are those of a
2014 Stanford University study in
which one cohort remained more-or-
less immobile while another group
walked briskly outdoors. The active
ones showed a marked increase
in creativity and problem-solving
when tested afterwards. Walking
stimulates the body’s molecular
growth factors to produce new
brain cells and the blood vessel
network is enhanced as muscle use
increases.
O’Mara’s findings are paralleled
in The Salt Path – he’s not
saying that walking cures brain
disease, but it may make it more
manageable, just as it eases Ray’s
harrowing thoughts. O’Mara calls
it ‘mindlessness’ brought on by the
body’s walking rhythms, which are
set by a ‘central pattern generator’
in the spinal cord. He describes
how this can then take the walker
into a state in which ‘huge areas
of ground are covered for what
feels like minimal effort, with great
enjoyment and feelings of control,
of oneness, of immersion, of
being in the zone’. Indeed, as Ray’s
psychological wounds slowly heal
in The Salt Path she ‘could feel the
sky, the earth, the water and revel
in being part of the elements’.
There are, though, frequent
reminders along the way that they
are homeless and poor.
They are often on the receiving
end of other people’s bigoted
perceptions of homelessness. It’s
fine when they are assumed to be
happy-go-lucky retired homeowners
on a big adventure. But when
they tell people, ‘We’re homeless,
nowhere to go’ they’re met with
contempt or fear. ‘One man reached
out and pulled his child towards
him, his wife winced and looked
away’. In their one encounter with
the urban homeless, Ray and Moth
know immediately they have no
desire to join the street drinkers and
the repetitive demands of addiction.
Among the
many mental
health benefits
established are a
marked increase
in creativity
and problem-
solving... Walking
stimulates the
body’s molecular
growth factors to
produce new brain
cells and the blood
vessel network
is enhanced
as muscle use
increases.
‘I wanted to run’ writes Ray.
‘Walk without expectation’ says
In Praise of Walking. The Salt Path
echoes this: ‘We walk until we stop
walking and maybe on the way
we find some kind of future’. The
wisdom Ray and Moth are granted
is a triumph of the spiritual over the
material: from being bereft at losing
the bricks-and-mortar of home, their
epiphany is that they ‘don’t need to
own a piece of land’ to be content.
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