Moving from Colorado to London Was a Shock. Hiking the Coast Kept Me Grounded.
Views from the England Coast Path, just outside of Padstow, Cornwall. Photo by Kassondra Cloos
The most memorable of my You alright faux pas happened on a rainy afternoon on the southwestern coast of Dorset last spring. I had just started hiking a famous section of the trail known as both the Southwest Coast Path and the Jurassic Coast. A friend and I had spent the day climbing grassy yet near-vertical hills with sheer cliffs plunging into the turquoise ocean below. In the dips, we motivated each other with the promise of sandwiches and Scotch eggs at the top of each hill. When we made it, we splayed ourselves on the soft grass and took luxurious naps in the fleeting sunshine, as if to photosynthesize between rain showers.
Now, amid a minor ocular catastrophe—a bug flew into my eye and had the audacity to die there—we were sheltering under a tree just outside the town of Lulworth Cove, on a narrow path sandwiched between a busy road and a cow pasture.
“You alright?” asked an oncoming walker, a man with his dog. In a moment of distress, I mistook the standard greeting for genuine concern about my wellbeing.
I stared upwards, blinking rapidly. I scooted away from a nearby cow.
“Yeah?” I said. “I just have a bug in my eye, that’s all. And we’re trying to get it out.”
“Oh,” he said, and I realized at once that I had said the wrong thing and foisted awkwardness onto his otherwise lovely afternoon walk. I tried to feel embarrassed by the situation so that I could cry enough tears to evict the bug corpse from my retina.
