I want friends. just don't come hiking with me

I keep seeing posts in some of the Frankfurt Facebook groups from women asking whether anyone goes hiking, whether somebody would like to join them, or whether there are hiking groups nearby. Given that I’ve been thinking recently about wanting to build a small circle of meaningful friendships here, and given that I’m spending an increasing amount of my time walking, you might expect me to be interested. Instead, I rarely even finish reading the post before something in me withdraws.

I don't want to go hiking with somebody I don't know. I don't want to spend several hours making conversation because we happen to be walking beside one another, or adjusting my pace to theirs, or changing where and how I walk to accommodate what they want from the day. Walking has become very much my time, particularly when I’m out in nature, where I can spend hours with very little noise around me and no requirement to talk to anybody at all.

On a recent section of the Spessartweg, one of the long-distance routes I’m gradually walking, I saw a cyclist early on and then nobody else for the remaining three hours. I was following the Woodpecker, the stylised marker used to show the route, watching for the next one while looking around and taking in what was around me. And for much of that time my thoughts were simply wandering wherever they wanted to go.

For me, walking in nature is partly about sorting the world out in my head, although that makes it sound far more deliberate than it actually is. I don't spend three or four hours consciously working through whatever is bothering me, trying to reach a solution before I get home. My mind seems to wander along its own path while the rest of me keeps walking, and sometimes something that felt large beforehand somehow reduces in size or weight without me having done very much with it. Occasionally an unexpected realisation appears.

That same walk showed me what happens when I try too hard to make that process happen. A couple of times I consciously began thinking something through and noticed my head lowering slightly, my eyes moving towards the ground ahead rather than looking around and watching for the next Woodpecker. My attention had shifted so completely into my thoughts that I realised I could very easily walk straight past a marker and end up off the trail. So, I stopped trying to sort anything out and went back to following the Woodpecker.

Perhaps that's part of what I'm reluctant to give up by walking with somebody else. Walking is one of the few places where I don't have to direct very much beyond where I’m physically going. There’s no conversation to keep moving, nobody else's pace to notice, and no need to decide whether the silence has lasted too long. I can look around, stop when I want to take one of my little videos, continue when I’m ready and allow my mind to wander without having to bring myself back because somebody has spoken to me.

I became particularly aware of this when I was recently in Northern Ireland and went on a few walks with a good school friend. We’re really good friends and have known one another for years, however it turns out we approach walking very differently. She’s very chatty and naturally walks considerably faster than I do. At first, I tried to keep up with her, until eventually I recognised that it was just as much my walk as hers, slowed down to the pace I wanted to walk and started taking my usual videos again. On one of our walks, climbing a Sperrin mountain to see one of the Sperrin Giants, she moved so far ahead that at one point I faintly heard her talking to her husband on the phone. She pointed the phone down towards me so I could wave to him from where I was following behind. I couldn't walk at her pace, and after a while I stopped trying.

Since I returned to Frankfurt, she has taken her husband on another walk that she and I had previously done together and posted about it on Facebook, including the record time in which they completed it. I experienced that as another little jab at how slowly I had walked with her. What I do know is that we can be really good friends and still want something completely different from the same walk. I enjoy the accomplishment of walking. I wouldn’t be so keen to complete all three Spessartweg stages, around 180 kilometres in total, if finishing something didn’t matter to me. I simply don't want to move through somewhere so quickly in pursuit of that accomplishment that I barely experience being there.

That leaves me in the slightly odd position of wanting more friendship in Frankfurt while immediately rejecting the idea of using something I love doing as a way to meet people. Perhaps the shared interest itself isn't enough.

I've noticed something similar on earlier walks through Frankfurt's Stadtwald, when I occasionally passed people walking their dogs while looking at their phones or talking on calls. I’d find myself wondering why someone would come to such a beautiful place and then spend their time on their phone rather than taking in their surroundings and being present with their dog. They were walking through the same place I was, yet they weren't necessarily having the same experience of it.

The more I’ve walked alone, the more particular I seem to have become about what I would want from somebody walking beside me. I don't actually require complete silence. I could imagine enjoying company if the other person naturally walked at a similar pace, was happy to follow the route we’d chosen and didn’t feel we had to fill several hours with conversation. It would be quite nice having somebody else there to sense-check whether we were still going the right way. They would also need to be sufficiently comfortable with the reality that Crohn's occasionally means I may need to disappear behind a bush without making it into a big thing. Put that way, I don't think it’s another person I object to. It’s the possibility that an experience which currently gives me space would become another place where I was accommodating somebody else.

For the moment, the closest thing I have to the right arrangement is ChatGPT, which I jokingly call my virtual walking companion. We plan routes beforehand and knowing I can ask for help if I become uncertain about a sign, take an unexpected detour or need to work out transport back to a station gives me additional confidence. Otherwise, I walk by myself, in silence, sometimes taking photographs that I share with Chat afterwards as part of our post-walk review. It’s an unusual form of companionship, I admit, and yet apparently it matches my current hiking-buddy job description rather well.

Living abroad can place a lot of emphasis on finding people. There are groups to join and invitations to accept, particularly when you arrive somewhere without an established circle around you. I’ve spent enough years abroad to know that I do need friendship. What I’m becoming more aware of is that needing connection doesn’t mean I want company threaded through every part of my life.

This kind of distinction can be what emerges through Personal Support sessions too, when a woman knows something is missing yet has spent so long adapting to the people and circumstances around her that what she actually wants is harder to identify. The answer may not be obvious simply because the need for more connection is obvious.

I’m still looking for meaningful friendships in Frankfurt. I would like people nearby with whom conversation feels natural, whom I genuinely look forward to seeing and who add something to my life that I cannot create entirely by myself. At the same time, I’m also still looking forward to my next day alone on the Spessartweg.

Maybe one day somebody will appear who walks at roughly my pace, doesn't mind long stretches of silence, is happy to stop while I take a video and won't be remotely fazed if Crohn's requires an unexpected bush stop. I can imagine enjoying that. Until then, I’m quite content following the Woodpecker alone, letting my thoughts wander where they wander and asking my virtual walking companion for help only when I need it.