Day One — 24.5km, one fallen tree, and a dandelion
I’ll be honest: I didn’t plan for it to go like this. But maybe that’s exactly how it was supposed to go.
Vincent drove me and Sybille l’atelier mobile to the edge of Brussels in the morning. We had no champagne for the baptism — boats get champagne, carts apparently get improvisation — but we baptized her anyway, and then he left, and I was alone with my cart and the city stretching out in front of me.
First stop: the town hall in Uccle, where Naomi had already printed flyers and was waiting with a warm welcome. I tried to bring Sybille inside. I was not allowed. We took a photo in front of the entrance instead.
From there, GC Het Huis, where a group of women were learning to build boxes from cardboard. I watched for a while, and then my bag strap snapped. Out came the sewing machine, right there. People gathered. Reactions were enthusiastic. The Singer does have that effect on people.
And then — I made a navigational error of some ambition. I messaged my friend in Oudergem asking if I could sleep over, glanced at the map, thought: maybe eight kilometers? Reader, it was not eight kilometers. I walked 18-something on the spiral alone, plus seven-and-a-half to get to the starting point. 24.5km total. On a leg that had already been complaining for a week.
Sybille was heavier than ideal. Komoot and I are still getting to know each other. The green ring route skips the Forêt de Soignes entirely, which I only discovered by walking it. And at some point, in the gathering dark, I came around a bend and found a massive fallen tree completely blocking the path — no way over, under, or around it. Just me, the cart, the silence.
I kept walking. I got there at eleven.
My friend had made food. There was a proper shower. There was a bed. There was also, somewhere around midnight, a cramp of truly spectacular proportions — but it passed, and I slept.
What I keep coming back to, though, are the encounters. Two women in headscarves near the path, curious and genuinely warm, asking about the cart. A man who was running, stopped mid-stride, and just helped me up a flight of steps without making anything of it. And a mother with a girl of about eight, who was carrying a dandelion at the fluffy-clock stage. The girl told me, very seriously, that a single seed from one of those can travel up to 800 meters before it plants itself somewhere new.
We talked for a bit. “Why are you walking with this big cart?” — “I’m an artist. It’s my first day.” — “So you draw when you meet people?” — “Well… sort of.”
I didn’t actually sew anything yesterday, apart from the bag. I didn’t stop to work. I was covering far too much ground for that — which is not the plan. The plan is ten kilometers a day, maximum. Brussels isn’t that big, and the whole point is to go slowly, to stop, to stay.
Today I’m resting at my friend’s place. It was supposed to rain all day but hasn’t much. Maybe I’ll leave tomorrow. Maybe.
This morning I asked her: what makes you feel at home? She said she’d thought about it overnight, and her answer was this: “The people around me who make me feel I can be myself. That’s when I feel at home.” and Music!
That’s why I’m walking.
