Musing While Lacing Up Those Boots

Walking is a transformative personal journey.  I have walked thousands of miles seeking clarity, respite from emotions, and beauty.  I can remember important and transformative walks which seemed to leave tracks, signs of passage.  Walking has moved me through all stages of my life, and is a powerful medicine for my soul. I walk alone and with friends, my spouse, companions, each step leaves a track marking where we have been, what we encountered along that walk.  This is by no means an original experience, and that is my point. The cultural and humanistic history of walking is ancient and rich, and spans all cultures of the world.

Walking is about the way, not the destination.  But what motivates people to go out walking, particularly on a long walk or pilgrimage? Throughout history, when people are seeking, walking is the vehicle through which they find connection and inspiration within themselves. Beethoveen took daily walks outside in nature for clarity of thought and for inspiration in his compositions. Virginia Woolf would dress as a man, for in her day women did not walk alone especially at night, and she would go “street-haunting” in London.  Walking was a communion with nature for Henry Thoreau, as a transcendentalist would catalog his observations of nature and wilderness, interpreting nature to consider how people should live. 

But you and I we don't need to travel deep into the woods or to far off foreign lands in order to engage in our seeking, the pilgrimage begins when you lace up your shoes and step out the door across the threshold of your questions and begin with the first of many footsteps along your daily journey back to yourself.  Inspiration, creativity, communion with nature, healing,  grief are your companions along the way. 

Imagine lacing up your shoes and opening the door to step out on personally uncharted land.  What are you feeling? Why are you there, what are you longing for, what are you seeking? What propels that first step?