I’m reading another walking book “A Time of Gifts.” It’s the first of a trilogy by Patrick Leigh Fermor, who walked in 1933 at the age of 18 from Hook of Holland to Constantinople. It is transporting.
So tonight he took me to the lost “kingdom” of Bohemia and I went back to the early ‘60s when I frequented a coffeehouse in Toronto called The Bohemian Embassy. It was all Chianti bottles and candles with folk songs sung by real singers. It was also a place where you dreamed of romantic adventures to magical places far from home.
After university I spent several years living a Bohemian life in Europe. I came back to Canada to live the antithesis. I have no regrets, however, there are pieces of that eccentric lifestyle that still haunt me.
Maybe this is why I plant a garden and walk Caminos. I need to escape to a lost world of ancient wonders. A world full of rich tapestries, old roses, lost rivers, dark mountains, soft music and eternal summer.
The roses are from my garden. They are remnants of a lost world. I nurture them as I nurture my dreams and they fill my life with a Bohemian richness, as poetry does.