Why Walk Anywhere?

Its strange how this blog is taking on a life of its own.  When I started it, I wanted to talk about the isolation and alienation so many of us have felt in our lives, and about the despair disconnection leads us to.  I also wanted to share with you the strangely mysterious process of reconnection that has taken place for me over the past couple of decades of my life.  This sharing for me is also an exploration of the phenomena as I really have no idea how this has all come about exactly.  Writing for me is a way to process and I often surprise myself with what flows out when I sit down and begin.  What seems to be predominant now that I am writing again is all the long walking I have done in the past decade.  I have known these walks have been very important for me; healing, clarifying, opening,  but I have not until now really tried to communicate anything of the import to anyone, including myself.   Yesterday, someone asked me again, "Why do you walk?"  This always happens when people find out I do long distance hiking, they invariably give me some question containing the word “Why?” in it. Good question. I know folks who ask me this are waiting to hear about some cause, challenge or vow, but in truth, the simple answer is, “I don't know”. I don't know why I walk 1000s of miles at a time, I just do. It is who I am, at least it has been for a while now, and as is true for all of us, I am a moment to moment product of all my experiences embedded in the matrix of life. I carry the past in me as I am now and this may contain some of the answer to “Why do you walk so far and for so long?” You see, as a young child I was lucky enough to find connection, intimacy and a grace filled sense of belonging in nature. I don't know when I lost it, but I did somewhere along the line, without even noticing. I think this happened because life isn't static and the reality of growing up in the complex 20^th century demanded I focus on what our society deemed important and more importantly, because there were no adults in my life to help me know what a treasure this was and how to stay in connection with it. The result being that the shift in attention inexorably took me year by year further away from this simple childhood state of grace until it was utterly forgotten.

Like most of my peers, I grew up, lived and aged doing all the things our culture says are important; I invested in career, marriage, children, social organizations, etc. and without realizing it, I expected each to provide me with unending happiness, which of course, they didn't. In the end, I achieved the American Dream but found it to be dust in my mouth. “Is this all there is?” I asked this at 30 after having a child and completing the last task on the how to be successful and happy list. I found myself having the house, the husband, a child and a successful career. I had all the toys, the cars, the clothes, and vacations but yet the emptiness was still there.

It would take 20 more years of asking the same question to realize that indeed, this was all there was if I continued making false idols out of unrecognized hopes and plans for getting a happy life. I was lucky again in my early 50s when, quite out of my control everything stopped working and life was utterly barren. That emptiness of failed hope, the unbearable pain that accompanied this state drove me to once again walk. Since then, I walk in the same way I breathe, and find my truest, uncluttered self on trails and roads. Why is that? Again, I don't know, but if pressed, I can move to my head and say it is probably true because while engaged in long distance walking, I have no goals but to walk, and when there are no goals, future living, all that planning we do on a daily basis, all that anticipating and worrying that inhabits our normal days, drops off leaving one fully in NOW, mile after mile, minute after minute, day after day. I can surmise that trail walking with its rocky and slippery tree root surfaces encourages, even demands rapt attention to avoid painful falls, even fatal falls. And attention is NOW, leaving little room for ruminating and rehashing past events. A 1000 miles of NOW, is a powerful experience. One loses track of clock time, its irrelevant. All that matters is, “Is there enough light to see the trail? And, how much time before the sun drops behind the horizon and it gets too dark to continue?” Days of the week vanish, and there is just daytime and nighttime, one after the other, forever. And months just become hot time, cold time, rain time, snow time. All that exists on a long trail is endless NOW. I suppose long walks in comparison to walks taken within one's daily life are different in that they become one's life and not just a respite from life. Ask most people about their walks and you will hear about “taking a walk to cool one's head off, or for weight loss and muscle tone.” Sometimes folks talk about saving gas and indeed, in certain places like Manhattan, walking becomes incorporated into a way of life, though often with cell phone attached to the ear.

I am also a Zen teacher and the past few years I have been puzzling over why, for me, and maybe others, short retreats in the zendo, where one just is, and daily morning walks or walking vacations of one or two weeks just haven't had the same effect as the long walk. What is it about this form that that makes it such a powerful facilitator of change, such a profound and harshly gentle healer?