“The Journey of a Thousand Miles…”

you know the rest, right?

Aug 23, 2024

a person standing on top of a sand dune — Photo by NEOM on Unsplash

There are a lot of things I would like to be known as: father, husband, principal, teacher, student, steward of sacred land, gardener, lover of life, vegan, driver, former athlete, reader, writer. Human would be appropriate too. It would be nice as well to include: compassionate, kind, loving—wholehearted. Add the adjective “good” in front of each, and you’d have me at hello. I strive to be good at things. I actually strive to be excellent at things—it’s an ideal I hardly ever reach, but it the correct ideal to have. To bring my best game to each moment allows me to make of the moment what it needs to be for me and for everyone I love.

Ultimately, for the long term if one wants to consider legacy, how I am known isn’t up to me. It’s up to others who access their memories of me based upon our shared experiences and based upon my actions. How I am known is also likely unique to the individual doing the remembering—and I’m never in control of that. One of my learnings over the course of my life has been to not care about what, or how, people think of me simply because it’s out of my control. Since I’ve focused on simply bringing my best game to each moment, everything else, including other’s opinions, become their own drama to deal with. I had to learn how to do this—after I first had to learn it was possible to learn this. It’s been revelatory and freeing. It’s been a part of my on-going Zen practice.

It’s now how I cook all the ingredients that make up the Alchemy of my journey.

a couple of people standing on top of a mountain — Photo by NEOM on Unsplash

There is something more I’d like to be known as, it’s one of my current aspirations. Because I do admire those who are great at it. In fact, there are famous ones too; and odd as it may seem, books have been written about it. And about them. It won’t surprise you I have some of those books. Among the greats are Charles Darwin, Albert Schweitzer, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Rebecca Solnit, Levison Wood, Virginia Woolf, Peace Pilgrim, Charles Dickens, William Wordsworth, Cheryl Strayed, John Muir, Beethoven, Lewis and Clark, and even Steve Jobs. Maybe you know more. They all have this one thing in common. The thing I want to get better at; one of the things I want to be known as.

I want to be known as a good walker.

“Where does it start? Muscles tense. One leg a pillar, holding the body upright between the earth and sky, the other a pendulum, swinging from behind. Heel touches down. The whole weight of the body rolls forward onto the ball of the foot. The big toe pushes off, and the delicately balanced weight of the body shifts again. The legs reverse position. It starts with a step and then another step and then another that add up like taps on a drum to a rhythm, the rhythm of walking. The most obvious and the most obscure thing in the world, this walking that wanders so readily into religion, philosophy, landscape, urban policy, anatomy, allegory, and heartbreak.”

~ Rebecca Solnit. Her first paragraph in “Wanderlust: A History of Walking”

There is inspiration even found here among my Substack friends. People like

Tom Cox

and

Cherie Lee

have written engagingly about walking (I’m certain more here on Substack have written about their walking habit, I just need to find them—and I’m sure I’d be just as enthralled!). It’s hard to explain the pull (you, I’m sure, know this as well when you try to explain why you are pulled to some kind of interest or passion), but it goes beyond wanting to do it for exercise.

I used to jog regularly. Older knees, at least mine, weren’t taking kindly to the pounding. I like to bike, but I don’t need to be known as a good biker. But walking….

“Good walker.”

You know, I just realized the funny in that moniker. We’ve had a couple of dogs as pets over the years, and we’d say to them “good walker” as we took them on their regular walks. You know, to encourage more “good walking.” As opposed to “bad walking.” I’m hoping I don’t have to describe to you what it looks like if you know how a dog could be a “bad walker.” (“Good” and “Bad” being completely relative.) Our chocolate lab, Huck, used to be such a great walker that he’d actually carry his own leash as he stayed in step with our steps. When it came to Sammy and walking, well…let’s just say he had lots of opportunity to keep learning. He did learn to become a better walker—and we were grateful for that.

“Walking, ideally, is a state in which the mind, the body, and the world are aligned, as though they were three characters finally in conversation together, three notes suddenly making a chord. Walking allows us to be in our bodies and in the world without being made busy by them. It leaves us free to think without being wholly lost in our thoughts.”

~ Rebecca Solnit, (same book)

As the body wanders in walking, so too the mind—but more freely. Sometimes I have written entire poems or Substack posts when walking. This has forced me to always have either my phone or a pad and pencil with me so I don’t lose word gems that find their way to me when I’m placing one foot in front of the other. Some of my best sentences were written on a walk only to be lost by the time I got home.

And walking as a mindfulness practice can free the mind entirely—which can be a great feeling. When students of ours became dysregulated, we’d tell them to feel their feet, to be where their feet were. It helped to ground them. It’s easier to be where your feet are when you are walking—they help you to be fully in the Now.

I was text/chatting with my S’stack friend Cherie the other day and complimented her on the photos she took on one of her recent walks. We talked about how walking is among the very best ways to come to know a place (my wife and I love to walk around town a bit whenever we are in a different locale—and we LOVE walking through Central Park in New York City!). Cherie and I lamented not having taken photos of past walks to remind us of the beauty of time and place when we respectively lived elsewhere. That conversation alone inspired me to start taking some photos even though I always prefer to live fully in the moment by experiencing the moment fully—which one cannot do when looking through the screen of a three by five inch iPhone screen. But because Cherie and I lamented not having some archival images to remind us of past beauty, even as those are always accessible through our imperfect memories, I began to photograph the places of my walks.

It’s amazing what can be truly seen and even learned with every walk. One can walk the same walk and believe it’s “just the same ol’ walk.” Or one can look with fresh and clear eyes to discover every walk, every single walk, even if on the same path, is different! (NOTE: LIFE LESSON THERE!). For example, on a walk you can learn about Domed Bog Ecosystems in British Columbia (who knew?). And you can be rewarded for your effort by foraging on amazing wild blackberries (here one second, the next second…empty hand. How else can you pick the next handful if first you don’t empty it?). On that walk you can be enthralled with an unexpected sunflower in a neighbor’s yard; and you can be equally dismayed, sadly expected, by the litter of thoughtless humans.

My wife and I often will walk with empty bags to pick up litter—the feeling after is one of meaning, stewardship, and a deeper love of place knowing we are playing a part in keep earth clean. Sad thing is, we often come home with multiple pounds of garbage; sadder yet, there will always be more trash to pick up even on the same walk.

More trash, stolen views of the distant Cascades on an overcast day, back down the hill to home. Then home.

Feathers. As I become more aware of the beings we live among, and with whom we share this place, I realize a different way to form community and relationship. Feathers are an example. Whereas in the past I’d never give feathers a second thought, I’ve come to realize, as most Indigenous peoples continue to know and practice, that feathers are sacred objects. Now, when a feather graces my path or presence, I honor it in recognition of the gift it is that has been left FOR ME by an avian friend or two. Or more. So, if out and about, and a bird of any kind has blessed me with a gift of themselves, I’ll often collect them and place them in a special outside place of solitude and remembrance that I’ve allocated for the purpose of deep reflection and meditation.
Feathers are now an important part of my Alchemy.
On this one walk, I collected four avian blessings.

I do wish I lived near more natural trails—in a sense I actually do, but I’d have to drive to them—there are a number of hikes I love, being so lucky to have ready access to so many within, at least, an hour’s driving distance. The Great Pacific Northwest is abundant in amazing walks and trails among its natural beauty. I have made a trail along the perimeter of my 1 acre parcel of land—which has just given me an idea to write about that, with photos, at a later time. Maybe. Maybe later in the fall when the leaves will color the landscape brilliantly. Leaving the property we are stewarding, we enter into a typical suburban village with sidewalks (if we are lucky) next to sometimes quiet, sometimes noisy and busy roadways of traffic. Not my favorite kind of walk by any means—but even still, there be beauty to be found there as well.

On every walk.

I won’t always take photos—full presence is much more desirable. But when unanticipated beauty or oddness or even sadness shows itself, once I have taken it in, I might capture it in pixels. Who knows, it may show up or inspire a future piece of writing.

For now, the only way to become a good walker, a good-to-great walker, is to just walk. No one else needs to know of my goodness-to-greatness desire as a walker. It’s just something I aspire to.

“Walking has been one of the constellations in the starry sky of human culture, a constellation whose three stars are the body, the imagination, and the wide-open world, and though all three exist independently, it is the lines drawn between them—drawn by the act of walking for cultural purposes—that makes them a constellation. Constellations are not natural phenomenon but cultural impositions; the lines drawn between stars are like paths worn by the imagination of those who have gone before. This constellation called walking has a history, the history trod out by all those poets and philosophers and insurrectionaries, by jaywalkers, streetwalkers, pilgrims, tourists, hikers, mountaineers, but whether it has a future depends on whether those connecting paths are traveled still.”

~ Rebecca Solnit. The final paragraph in “Wanderlust: A History of Walking”

Here’s to traveling them still. And well.