49 pages • 1 hour read
Raynor WinnThe Salt Path
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2018A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Stigma of Life on the Margins
Winn makes her political and social views clear throughout the memoir. This becomes obvious, for example, when the pair interact with military figures and Raynor wonders what they would have died for if they die. In another instance, they see a father harshly scold his son on the beach and decide to leave, disapproving of the father’s physical aggression. Winn’s most enduring commentary throughout The Salt Path is reserved for issues related to homelessness and living on the margins.
The text includes various reactions to life on the margins. Most of this comes from experiences that Moth and Raynor have through being discriminated against by people who judge them. The strain their situation puts on their relationships with close friends is also clear. No matter how generous friends are, they feel like financial burdens in the end. This is the case with Polly in Part 5. She does her best to support them, but Raynor also clearly feels that the dynamic of their relationship has strained, as she believes that Polly sees her “as a tenant who paid no rent” while Polly maintained “a life that represented everything her friend had lost” (211).
Another core element here is how Moth and Raynor respond to unhoused people with whom they cross paths. Moth, who is friendly, tends to accept everyone and is very generous with their limited rations and cash. Raynor at times exposes a bias and fear with which she is uncomfortable. This is particularly true when they initially meet Colin, and she wonders if it is due to her discomfort with urban unhoused people. The judgmental reactions of people toward those who lack stable housing, and Moth’s singular generosity, highlight the unfair discrimination that people face for circumstances beyond their control.
Winn also focuses on legitimacy as it relates to lives on the margins. Moth and Raynor recognize that when they tell others that they sold their home to seek adventure, they are generally accepted and envied for their adventurous spirits. When Moth is confused for eccentric artist Simon Armitage, those around him become starstruck. They also come across historical examples of when the government freely housed people. Even Raynor admires people who stay on the move even when they are unhoused while pitying those, like Colin, who from her perspective stop moving and accept the streets as their home. This suggests that stigma disproportionately affects the most marginalized people.
The Struggle to Overcome Adversity
Once they lose their home and Moth is diagnosed with his degenerative illness, Moth and Raynor are plagued with uncertainty. Moth’s diagnosis can only be confirmed in an autopsy, and the doctor acknowledges that the condition is progressing much more slowly than what is typical. That means that there are hardly any absolutes related to his illness, and there is plenty of room for Raynor in particular to deny the diagnosis. They also have no clarity about what to do after losing their home, as they were not prepared for the judgment against them. As they have built their lives around the farm, they do not have much documented employment, which means they struggle to find work. All this means that the struggle to overcome adversity is especially complicated for Moth and Raynor. Identifying the challenges that they are facing is inseparable from the struggle itself.
Throughout the first part of the hike, they struggle to answer basic questions about their motivations, and there is no clear sense that they truly overcoming anything or facing the right challenges. The hike itself is challenging, and it presents many obstacles they must overcome, but there is also a very real possibility that it is merely a distraction from facing the real challenges that they have no idea how to overcome. At one point, Raynor asks, “Do you think this is just a masochistic way of pretending we’re not homeless?” (80). At another, she worries that the hike had hastened Moth’s condition. While they do eventually realize that the strenuous hiking seems to benefit Moth, they also do not have goals that they are working toward other than a vague sense that they will hike to Land’s End. After they get there, they fall into despair and stagnate as they sort out their lives while living in a friend’s shed.
For Raynor, the real struggle is ultimately about acceptance. Namely, she must accept that Moth is ill and that his condition will deteriorate even though that shouldn’t stop them from improving the quality (and longevity) of his life. Moth makes this clear when he reveals that he has had open conversations with their children while Raynor has been avoiding it. By the end of the book, Raynor has moved in that direction. For both, this struggle means identifying goals beyond the destination in their hike that they can strive toward despite the obstacles that they are likely to encounter.
The Impact of Nature on Healing and Well-Being
As this memoir focuses on the author’s experience of hiking the South West Coast Path, there is a big focus on nature. However, this does not promote a simplistic celebration of the natural world. Initially, Moth and Raynor discover that strenuous hiking seems to benefit Moth and improve his condition. Though they speculate that this improvement has something to do with oxygen flow, they have no definitive conclusions. They also learn that there are limits. As the weather turns cold, his health quickly deteriorates again (though he tries to hide it), and they both suffer psychologically.
Moth and Raynor must come to accept that while nature has its benefits, it is not a panacea. They must also learn what it means to live in the human world again, which turns out to be a harder task than hiking the trail. They cannot completely separate nature from human influence. The path overlaps with many towns, many of which are also tourist destinations. Many towns market themselves through suspect historical legacies and references to legends. In other words, though Moth and Raynor are marginalized and might try to escape it, they are rarely that far from the human world. That world, which (from their perspective) exploits culture and history for financial gain, is not appealing to them, but it is there, nonetheless. Moreover, their hike takes them through a variety of regions that have been and still are being used for their natural resources. In one instance, clay mining has created enormous piles of waste and holes that the locals have repurposed to attract tourists.
The human and natural worlds have shaped each other extensively in this part of the world. This is apparent in efforts to return nature to some idealized version. In one instance early in their hike, Moth and Raynor come across a field of rhododendrons. Winn points out that there have been failed attempts to eradicate the plant, which is regarded as invasive; however, there is fossil evidence that it was native before the last ice age. In another instance, they stay in informal housing that is hidden in a forest of pine trees, which are also regarded as invasive. They learn that the pine will probably be cleared soon. Winn points to how the trees have created habitats for numerous animals. Unspoken here is the reality that the forest has also created a place of shelter and security for the people who live there, and it will be taken from them because someone else has decided that the trees’ presence is unnatural.
