Opinion – É Logo Ali: Trailing is for everyone; yes you can too

If you are an urban being who only walks around in the cool of the mall, if your leisure vision is to marathon series in front of the TV, and you can’t even imagine taking a path that you consider hostile to your city, much less a path in the middle of the woods For this world of the gods, I ask you to think again and give me a few minutes of your attention.

Believe me, I always have been and, I confess, I still often catch myself, much like you. Oh, laziness…! The thought of dust, mud, rocks, mosquitoes and treacherous branches sometimes terrifies me as well as fascinates me. I don’t know if Freud explains it, but let’s stay like this, that mental health is the subject of another blog.

But, then, why on earth would a canary in a cage, like me, intend to write precisely about trails, paths and detours, and on top of that trying to convince the reader that this can be, yes, a good idea?

So. Once upon a time there was a citizen who, on the eve of her 59th birthday and after overcoming cancer, heard an unexpected invitation from a friend: why don’t you join us on the Camino de Santiago?

This citizen, in my case, wasn’t even that sedentary. I had just run my first (and only) race of San Silvestre with the Kenyan nothing time of over two hours. I had already participated in some shorter races, 5 and 7 km that year, but waking up early was never my thing and most races start at dawn, always with a jumping crowd rubbing their faces in happiness. As for me, I arrived at the start still with pillow marks and that feeling of “what am I doing here?”.

But it’s one thing to run a race, or run on the treadmill at the gym. It’s quite another thing to put a backpack on your back and go around kicking one leg after the other for, let’s say, more or less half of the 900 kilometers of the Camino de Santiago, in Spain. Yes, the invitation was to join a 450 kilometer walk across the Atlantic, something like walking from São Paulo to Rio de Janeiro.

Well, I accepted. And I liked it. More: I loved every minute of everything I hated. It’s addictive.

And it is for people like us that this blog proposes to talk about trails, paths and everything that can involve a healthier life, muddy and smeared with sunscreen and insect repellent.

Warning to the unwary: I will not try to convince anyone to climb Everest. The people capable of this belong to a differentiated platoon that I don’t even dream of reaching, and that probably won’t waste time reading what I intend to offer the reader (but if they do, they’ll be welcome, it’s always an honor to talk to demigods).

In this space we will talk about how and where to start stumbling through potholed sidewalks, wallowing in the world of mudflats, what to take when the world goes behind us, how to face the inevitable perrengues of wildlife or the urban jungle, in short, how to take your cage canary to rehearse the first flights in the open air. And tell some story that another, like that, to alleviate.

Let’s go together? Believe me, what seems so far away ends up being right there.