Someone asks if I need water, and shares from his bottle. Sharing a water bottle becomes a somatic marker for me – an object through which affect can move. I tell them about my father, how he told me that Finnish peacekeepers used prostitutes in Israel in the 1980s and their main concern was getting gonorrhoea. This is so absurdly unethical, and my openness so uncanny, that we laugh about it. The laugh and the bottle make a memorable moment. I remember where we sat (on a stone), who I was interviewing, and how the bottle passed from a cadet to my hand, and how I gave it back. The sharing of water embodies a memory.
I do not take part in the tasks, which the cadets have to complete before continuing the walk, but my body shares the pain of walking. At least until the moment I have to leave my group for a while. Not because I am tired, but because I had not imagined I would want to (or would physically be able to) walk that much, so I did not bring enough food with me. I call my husband to pick me up, and I go back home to eat.
At home, I feel anxious. I want to go back. At 21:52 I text a cadet who keeps track of where each group is. I have been given a map and decide that I will go to control point R4 in Laajasalo. I am there before my group, so I sit on the gravel and wait. I am back to being awkward and silent, until I see my people, and join them for the last few kilometers of the march. But it is at this control point that something shifts again.
