The Modern Wayfarer: A Call to Walk

Art historian and writer Emma Rose Barber shares her thoughts on the modern wayfarer, getting away from technology and reconnecting with nature 

In this intoxicating, but inexplicable information led world, imagine going out for a walk without your phone. Picture a figure, seen from afar, with a walking staff, heavy boots and possibly a sack on their back. A figure following footpaths, out there outside, out of choice. Without being told where to go, or, how to conduct the walk. This is the modern wayfarer, breaking free of digital dependency, lifestyle choices, virtual virtue signalling, message memes and Chatbots. 

The modern wayfarer is somebody who is being reminded of the simplicity of life and requiring little. In this over emphasised time of dos and don’ts, where our individual identities wrap round us like a big thick coat, the modern wayfarer ignores the zeitgeist that follows theherd. And simply goes walking. Often alone, but happily so. For the modern wayfarer belongs to an ancient tradition of those who walked, but not necessarily to far-flung or glamorous locations. They were part of a community of those who understood the ways of Nature and its cycles and seasons. Something we are in danger of losing today, as we look at our surroundings through the filter of a phone. 

In danger of being a ‘lost’ word, a wayfarer is not necessarily a pilgrim (a much over-used word today), or even a hiker or a trekker. No, a wayfarer can be somebody who takes a simple journey on foot, even if the journey begins on a shabby strip of land, or an overgrown footpath at the back of the house. 

Wayfaring does not have to be a status act. The modern wayfarer remembers unfettered walking on the land, acutely aware of the microscopic, the fall of a leaf, the mud ruts on the paths, the mass of bracken, the tangled hedgerows. All the marks left by Nature’s varying moods. 

For thousands of years, people have gone on such journeys, not always with a destination or end point in mind. While the people who took them are unrecorded, their walks untraceable, and their footsteps unknowable, we can still imagine them. As to be a modern wayfarer is to walk those same ancient ways and paths that have their own histories too. 

In England the word wayfarer can be traced back to the Anglo-Saxon period, but its meaning has changed over time, just as our use of the land has. From the Middle Ages, wayfarers were on the limits of society, needing food and lodging and who relied on the Christian tenet of the Seven Works of Mercy (such as feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, sheltering the homeless) and presuming the kindness of strangers, but at the time, they were also viewed with suspicion as witnessed in historical accounts. 

They walked for a bed or a ‘dole’ (where the modern word comes from) at a medieval hospital. Not the way in which we understand the word today, but as coming from the Latin word – hospitum, as in hospitality. Both pilgrims and wayfarers, as well as itinerant workers could go to such a place for help. We might call this the equivalent of social care today. 

But over time, the wayfarer became something more romantic. Something aligned with poets and writers who would take a satchel, a walking stick, a pouch of food and would seek inspiration in what they saw, where they would write of the minute particulars of a scene; the birds heard in the trees, a clump of moss on the ground. These wayfarers were free to roam, until the Enclosure Acts from the 17thcentury put a stop to being able to walk everywhere.

But writers, such as the poet John Clare, saw the countryside as a blessing and a way in which to have faith (in a general sense) restored, to relish beauty, the essence of all things alive, which was witnessed without any sort of ‘influencer’. In Sussex, for example, there was the 18th-century poet and novelist, Charlotte Smith, who lived for a while at Woolbeding House near Midhurst (the garden is open to the public), author of Letters of a Solitary Wanderer (1801-2). The 19th-century writer, George Borrow, who spent time with the gipsies even had his own wayfaring creed. 

And while we might also associate the word wayfarer with a restless mind, or the ‘poor’ wayfaring stranger – (think Bruce Springsteen et al), the word can be both neutral and timeless. But it can also be applied to the idea that if we reinstate the act of simple walking, we can shrug off our woes. 

The modern wayfarer finds a path, the mind ready to be cleared and they carry with them the gift of raw sight, remembering that the eyes, not the click of the phone give us the direct conduit to see. Natural treasure is all there. And so the wayfarer might also take penand paper gathering in the words like kindling to record their simple walk. They venerate richness coming from the unexpected, even the ordinary. Which we badly need to remember in this over-stretched time, where what truly matters is under threat. 

So much is clamouring for our attention. Shouting for us. Not so the brittle twig, just lying there on the path. The modern wayfarer might walk by it – but all the same, sees as much beauty in it as their phone. 

Finding the Wayfarer: Physical, Spiritual and Poetic Survival by Emma Rose Barber is available on Amazon and to order from all good bookshops