A love of walking

Walking the Kumano Kodo, June 2023

When I walk, leaves crunch underfoot, wind drums into my ears and birds soar overhead. Streams drip and burble past ancient trees that shelter mushrooms shot up from a network of mycelia.  I feel connected to the landscape and so I keep walking, for longer and longer.  Where does this desire to walk come from? It must be from somewhere deep, deep within, some part of me that is old and timeless.

After all, we are born to walk.   It was our ability to stand upright and stride forward that took us out of the savannas of east Africa. We walked on to escape drought, we walked further to find food.  We walked through a freezing world during the last Ice Age to seek better chances at living. Over time we’ve reached every corner of the world and we’ve developed a boldness in risk taking and a belief that things will be okay.

Walking, then, defines our history—our migrations, our intellect, and the human spirit.  To wander further away from home, then, is human nature.  School graduates do it to gain a sense of themselves, monks for enlightenment, pilgrims to atone their sins, and I do it to chase the sublime in nature’s grandeur. While we walk, we become one with the land and we step out of our minds and into the now-ness of beauty and awe. We become alive.

And at the end, we gain a better understanding of ourselves and of our interconnectedness shared by six thousand tongues and tens of thousands of cultures. We connect with our primordial home and experience her time and place and space. We learn that we must look after her even if it means to change some part of ourselves.