‘HIKING REPRESENTS ENDLESS FREEDOM’
Gail Muller, 46, lives in Falmouth, Cornwall, with her dog, Bill Murray.
After days hiking through the depths of pine forests in Maine, USA, I arrived at a clearing at the top of a mountain. There was nothing but trees for hundreds of miles in every direction. I smiled, remembering how I was once incapable of walking as far as the bathroom. My legs were covered in cuts, scrapes, bruises – even a bit of blood – but I felt lucky to have a body aching from achievement, not chronic pain.
I was born with my feet turning in. As a teenager, I saw a gait specialist, who warned I’d end up with such debilitating misalignment and pain that I’d be in a wheelchair by middle age. I didn’t want it to be true, so I didn’t tell anyone. But it hovered over me like a grey cloud. Sure enough, my movement deteriorated and I spent my 20s in agony. In my early 30s, a pain specialist told me
