Lauren Holloway, produce manager at Nash’s Farm Store, stopped to tell her story as she shopped the store for healthy snacks to take on her next adventure: a walkabout.

“Tomorrow I’m taking a day of personal evaluation. I’m going to fill a backpack with snacks and water and I’m planning to walk away from my home in Dungeness and just go.

I don’t know where I’m going. I don’t know how long I’m going to go or where I’ll end up, but it just feels like a good thing to do.

And who knows what I’ll encounter?

It’s a daylong thing; I can’t afford more time than that right now.

I really am inspired to walk the pilgrimage route of the Camino de Santiago across northern Spain at some point. My boyfriend and I have been thinking of ways we could get the same experience without actually having to travel to Spain.

We’ve been talking about doing our own little ‘Camino’ right here, from back in the Olympics all the way to the water, but I kind of feel like I need something sooner, so I’m just going to head out on foot.

It’s important for people to take time to be with themselves.”

Everyone has a story and now they have a place to tell it. Verbatim is a first-person column that introduces you to your neighbors as they relate in their own words some of the difficult, humorous, moving or just plain fun moments in their lives. It’s all part of the Gazette’s commitment as your community newspaper. If you have a story for Verbatim, contact editor Michael Dashiell at editor@sequimgazette.com.