This article is written by YourLifeChoices Founder Kaye Fallick
In early 2020 Laura Coffey was suffering from two different forms of heartbreak. The six-month relationship with a man she hoped might become her long-term partner had ended. And her father’s terminal cancer was steadily worsening. The arrival of the Covid pandemic brought a sharp halt to visits to her father in Oxfordshire, as protecting him from this new and frightening virus took precedence over all other considerations.
Cooped up in a one-bedroom flat in East London, cut off from those she loved and with no prospects of paid work in sight, she started to question her ability to stay sane while managing her sadness. As luck would have it, weeks before the relationship breakup, Laura had purchased a new ‘muscular’ edition of Homer’s The Odyssey, translated by American academic Emily Wilson.
Something in this age-old story of adversity and endurance spoke to her, stirring her imagination and dreams. And so, with London, like so many other high density centres, rapidly closing itself off from the travelling world, Laura faced a dilemma. Should she hang in there, unemployed, fearful and isolated in her tiny flat. Or should she seize the chance to use a travel corridor and head to the Mediterranean sun?
Her father made it easy for her.
‘Go,’ he said, adding in a joking tone, ‘after all it’s not like you’re a doctor or anything useful!’ … just go – what else are you going to do? Mope around that tiny flat by yourself?’
With Italy on the list of so-called ‘safe’ countries, Coffey headed to Lipari, one of the seven Aeolian islands north of Sicily. Within moments of arriving, she enters the sea and experiences the wonder of its restorative powers.
‘It seemed as though, all at once, I was coming back to myself, holding the shape of myself again … I promised myself that I’d swim every day, see every sunset, visit as many islands as I could … I was greedy for life again.’
Coffey’s delight in her own ability to shape her destiny through travel brings to mind another female nomad and author, Rita Golden Gelman who wrote Tales of a Female Nomad back in 2001. She, too, was choosing adventure in the wake of a relationship breakdown, in her case a pending divorce.
While from different generations – Gelman embraced solo travel in her late 40s, Coffey is much younger, their stories are similarly inspiring. Gelman’s travels in Latin America and Southeast Asia were largely inspired by her degree in anthropology, whilst Coffey was heavily influenced by the possible locations of The Odyssey.
I meet Coffey in Cambridge in September, keen to learn if her courage and tenacity was something that could be understood and perhaps transmitted to other women equally keen to explore a better understanding of themselves through travel. My first question is whether travel can actually help you find your footing.
‘Yes,’ she responds. ‘It offers a freedom and spaciousness where I feel connected to the elemental power of nature by hiking, swimming in cold water, feeling able to move well in the sunlight. I was back, swimming, walking, free. Profoundly grateful to be healthy, to climb mountains and swim. I felt alive – and (recognised) the importance of moving forward.
‘Travelling alone means gaining the freedom to explore and being able to better connect. When you’re alone two things happen. You’re more approachable. And you make more of an effort.
‘I also met so many strong women with strong points of view and ways of living. And no, I wasn’t too concerned about personal safety. The pandemic was a strange time. With London highly infectious, Europe seemed a much safer place to be. And I remained very respectful of all the measures that different countries required.’
Coffey spent six months on her own particular odyssey, following the myths and beauty of a handful of very different islands in Italy, Croatia and Spain.
‘I liked that no one knew where I was and found (in) the solitude of swimming, the opposite of loneliness.’
Coffey’s journey is anything but logical, partly due to imperatives of pandemic travel. Her starting point is in Lipari, one of the Aeolian Islands in Italy. From here she sails to Cefalu in Sicily, then to two of the Aegadian islands, Marittemo and Favignana, also off the coast of Sicily. From there she heads east to Korcula in Croatia before turning west to Menorca in Spain.
Along the way, Coffey hikes up volcanoes, explores caves, churches, monasteries and castles and meets a myriad of kind and diverse local people. All the while she is reading and referencing her copy of The Odyssey, sharing the details of this timeless fable as well as speculating on the meaning and the places where Odysseus engaged with the ancient gods and goddesses. Coffey is an empathetic traveller, journeying through her senses, feeling the breezes, winds and waves, inhaling the spring fragrances and imbibing local wines, while trusting her wits to keep her on track. Her days are full of ocean swimming, reading, writing, hiking and reflections on the lessons offered by The Odyssey as the hero eventually finds his way back to the tiny island of Ithaca.
Inevitably, later, in Menorca, Spain, she receives a call from her brother, who tells her that her father is going downhill rapidly and she will need to return as quickly as possible.
There can be no happy endings when someone you love has incurable cancer and soon after Coffey’s return to her family home, her father dies. During the subsequent English winter, Coffey sleepwalks through a surreal time of cold weather and deep family sorrow, slightly relieved by the small kindnesses of others.
Months later she returns to both Favignana and Menorca. It is on Menorca that she spends a day ‘bird ringing’ (catching birds and fitting them with rings to trace migratory patterns) with Javier, a local ornithologist. This proves to be ‘the best day for a long time’, allowing Coffey to feel like herself again, ‘fully absorbed, fully in the world’. Reflecting upon her Mediterranean travels and her journey of grief, she observes that ‘our stories and how we tell them to each other matter’.
She is right.
In Enchanted Islands she has bared her heart and her soul and shared many ways women might travel to seek, learn and share. She says she would like to encourage others to start moving, to get into the world.
‘Saying yes is a world – when you say yes, different dimensions open. It’s important to set things in motion, to put yourself in play.
Laura Coffey, Enchanted Islands: Travels through myth and magic, love and loss, Summersdale Publishers
Rita Golden Gelman, Tales of a Female Nomad, Broadway Books.
Kaye Fallick is a writer and best-selling author. She is also the founder and former publisher of the YourLifeChoices website, which she believes gave her a 20-year ‘apprenticeship’ in learning the health, money, and life stage dramas and concerns of Australian baby boomers. She’s an advocate for Australians over the age of 60, and we are delighted to have her on board, writing content for you. If you’d like to know more about Kaye, you can visit her website, Staying Connected.
