All
my life I've wanted to travel. Rooted to a farm and family who lived
in the same place for more than 150 years, travel seemed exotic,
foreign, exciting, novel.
I
hoped geographic change might lead to an autobiographical
change.....changing my coordinates, might profoundly and for the
better change me.
I
started traveling on my own two feet as a child spending hours
walking through fields, forest, meadows, across creeks, hills, roads.
Finally as an adult, I've been able to travel and yet I find that
nothing is so deeply soul satisfying no matter where I go, or how--
by plane, train or car – as walking.
Walking
serves as a meditative balm to a stormy mind. I read now that
children can't get more than 150 feet away from a parent. It stuns me. I
went miles and miles without an adult in sight and no such thing as
cell phone coverage.
I didn't have time when I was actively parenting
to realize I was bucking any trends when I let my children “free
range” across miles and miles of prairie.
“Not all those who wander are lost.”
The
angst of adolescence brought a huge spate of walking. I weathered
divorce and job loss and other traumas by walking.
For two years
while living in a valley of the Missouri River, I walked far out into the
country every night. I walked until all I could see was the Milky
Way and all I could hear were the calls of geese flying by the moon,
south in winter, north in summer. The Milky Way and the encouraging call of
geese flying the same path their kind have flown for thousands of
years, all of us alone and spinning slowly through the vacuum of
space, somehow alive and aware calmed my soul, made me glad.
That
Missouri River valley walking showed me that I could walk into the
infinity of the galaxies. It whittled my problems down to size.
“Don’t try to get anything out of it, because you won’t. Don’t try to make use of it, because you can’t. And that’s the point. Just walk, see, sit down if you like. And be. Just be, whatever you are with whatever you have, and realise that that is enough to be happy. ”
Walking is my church, though for me it's not a replacement for church.
I've
walked when my soul was at peace, when placing one foot in front of
the other was pure joy-- holding the hand of a new love, or mulling
some novel idea or project. I've walked to know definitely that I'm
alive and to feel my exact and yet moveable, changeable place in the
world. I've walked to give pain some room, to give meaning and
texture to life, to feel heat, wind, cold, rain, snow. I've walked
to see the moon wax and wane. I've walked to know what I think and to
give room and space for the “watcher” who resides in each of our
souls, silent, observant, waiting for us to pause so that we can hear
the small quite voice.
"[Walking]
is the perfect way of moving if you want to see into the life of
things. It is the one way of freedom. If you go to a place on
anything but your own feet you are taken there too fast, and miss a
thousand delicate joys that were waiting for you by the
wayside.”
I've
walked without a destination in mind, without striving to reach a
previously selected goal. I've walked without purpose. I've walked
with determined purpose. I've walked with out intention. I've walked
to remember and walked to forget. I've walked to loose and find
myself.
 |
| Kayaking is a close cousin to walking |
I've
walked to discover. I've walked to get lost, sometimes on purpose,
sometimes by accident. I've walked and seen the delicate joys and
sorrows of the world.
Walking
the world, the town, the neighborhood, the block I've learned the
way, left, right, left of the concrete world and seen the mystery of
spring into summer into fall into winter and round again.
No
longer bound by the limits of the distance my feet can carry me in a
day, I've discovered there's no more exciting, or fabulous journey
than the one I can reach by foot.
The
cost of travel is the pain of getting there.
The joy of travel is
the walk around the block, the discovery and novelty waiting just
around the bend.
