You could say that Heidi Spühler does as she pleases, and yet she followed her intuition and her heart every step of the way. She silenced reason, fears, control and “yes, but…”.
At 60, the one who has great admiration for the insolent and daring Pippi Longstocking threw the dice and decided to blow it all up. Life offered her a window of freedom, no boyfriend, no grandchildren (her son was 35), a fit body, a profession she could practice remotely, the desire to travel light and to clean slate.
She imagined and fine-tuned her “survivor” project for a year before putting the ends together, on March 31, 2018. She left her apartment, stored her guitar and some belongings with a friend, parked her car with another and left with her shoes see country and people.
“I am an idealist, a little naive. It saved me. If you think about everything that can happen, you don’t leave,” she told me.
Nothing original about a spring hiking excursion for this Swiss-German born on a farm. Except that Heidi left without reservations, that she would sleep with strangers over the meetings and invitations that would be made at the discretion of the fields (or on Facebook), as in the days of beggar banks.
It is by rubbing shoulders with others that we progress
1332 km, 110 days of walking (plus 525 km hitchhiking) until mid-July. And 61 houses have welcomed her as a guest, a friend or a pilgrim, sometimes one night, sometimes two if affinities. This is how Heidi traveled on the roads of Estrie, Beauce and Charlevoix, in cold, hot or rainy weather, with fatigue, pain (cursed knee) and vigilance as her companion. road. His idea ? Bring “happiness to the next”.
She carries around with her her active listening, her good humor, her help, her joie de vivre, after 20 km of walking a day, from village to village, without a pre-established itinerary, haphazardly.
Asking, receiving, an art
This life coach, former home nurse, tells me that she appreciates her bed and her pillow, but that getting out of her comfort zone was beneficial to her. We had to learn to ask and to receive, an exercise in humility. What remains to him most precious of these 14 weeks? “I fell in love with life again, with MY life. It was the gift of the encounter. And she recounts her human adventure in a book she self-published last year, The fabulous journey of an intuitive adventurer.
In this travelogue, she meets humans who open their doors to her even if they are absent; she shares the intimacy of ordinary heroines (90% of her guests were women), who take care of children, the elderly, who have a family nursery or a sick spouse, who are going through life crises or not. “There has never been a small talk. People told me about their life in 15 minutes. I made myself available to them through active listening. It’s so sad to have to pay to be listened to today,” thinks Heidi.
The greatest traveler is not the one who has traveled around the world ten times, but the one who has circumnavigated himself once.
In the Eastern Townships, his hostess Claudia leaves him a jar of crabapple jelly to give to the next one, at the next bend. Heidi stops at a bakery and it is the baker Samuel who will offer her lodging. He will shed a tear when he sees the little pot and the note that accompanies it: “Dear lucky neighbors who can welcome our beautiful adventurer into their home! I wish you as much happiness, laughter and depth with Heidi as I experienced with her. It is thanks to nature and her solitary walks that the pilgrim recharges her batteries between encounters, which are very demanding for her in terms of adaptation and presence to others. Intuition, that little inaudible voice in the chaos, serves as a precise and reliable GPS for trusting destiny.
In all, two misadventures, a man hitchhiking whose energy made her uncomfortable and another who offers her a place in his bed for the night… “I said ‘no thank you!’ and I chose the basement room. »
In fact, Heidi was always afraid of not giving enough in return: “It’s my accounting side…”
The testimonies gleaned along the way say a lot about his passage: “A sentence from you that marked me… what could I do that would do you good? writes Melanie.
Heidi was a source of inspiration for many women, an example of sovereignty, empowerment and freedom: “Freedom is doing what you want, despite despite. You have no more excuses”, sums up the all-terrain coach.
Praise of lightness
Four years later, Heidi is still a beautiful 65-year-old nomad. She lives with 11 people in a Spanish hostel, in co-living, she told me. She will rent a friend’s condo at a discount for six months this spring, near a lake. Its journey continues, it is lightly loaded, like a volunteer simple-minded.
She managed to live on less than $15,000 in income in 2018; his 14-week trip cost him a few hundred dollars. Her vision of the world goes far beyond the material aspect and Heidi remains convinced that our chains are internal, that the universe responds to the demands we make of it. The universe (or its lucky star) seems to have responded.
If you want to give me a bed, food and a little tobacco to boot, I’ll stay. I ask you nothing more.
She wants old people to take their place in a resolutely ageist society and refuses to be labeled as “elderly”. “Stop with the “seniors”! We’re going to have to take our place and refuse these labels. As we get older, we are more and more free. »
I made rose tea and chocolate chip cookies to welcome her home. Opening your door to a complete stranger has become a heroic and reckless gesture since 2020. Yet it is my job.
The Swiss told me her adventure with the slightly quavering and soft voice of Kim Yaroshevskaya at the time of Fanfreluche. “When I arrived in Quebec 38 years ago, it insulted me to be compared to a grandmother with a bad wig on her head. »
And Heidi told me a story in her own way, a story to amuse you…
Instagram: josee.blanchette