It has taken me 60 years to learn how to walk, to know that it has nothing to do with distance or time walked, everything to do with simple movement, everything to do with observation, everything to do with switching the brain into neutral, into “receive” mode.
Walking is what we have evolved to do, so if we do not walk, we turn our backs on millennia of progress.
I wonder about the link-person, the ape/human, the one who took the very first walk and didn’t go back. I wonder about that one who came down from the trees and did not return to the branches. Was that a conscious decision? Or did they simply get lost on the savannah? Or walk too far to get back home by nightfall?
Through the evolutionary process, there would have been that period where we lived in the trees and on the ground, but much like a weather front has an edge, a line between raining and not raining, there must also have been a firm line between the fluid existence between land and trees, and the first one who said ‘no…tonight I’ll nest on the ground’…and kept nesting on the ground…and brought up children and grand-children who forgot that it had ever been any other way.
I wonder about that first walker and whether she consciously chose, or just got lost.
A friend believes that the gods give us our path, and it is for us to walk it as best we can. I reject that idea. I believe that we make our own path, even as we walk it. We make our path by walking it.
I have always walked, ever since I could put one foot in front of the other unaided, I have been taken on walks, for walks, walking, hiking, strolling, wandering. As I am a non-driver, walking is a fundamental part of my life. Whatever mode of public transport we are blessed with, a certain amount of walking is involved in the getting too and from. As a child it was simply expected that we would walk to school, to the shops, to play-spaces. Walking became something that was sometimes necessary, and yet remained something we did by choice.
The joy of my Dad having a car wasn’t that we got lifts to school – we sometimes did, but only in the worst weather and only if he was on the right shift to be around at the appropriate time – the joy was that we got to go to awesome places and then get out and walk. We walked on beaches, in woods, up hills, along lanes, through towns, over fields.
As a child it never occurred to me that this was a privilege. I didn’t think much about those people who physically cannot walk. I thought even less that there might be kids whose parents wouldn’t dream of just going walking, or encouraging them to do so on their own. I thought not at all that there might be something radical about walking, that it could be a form of protest.
When I was in my teens, if I said I was going out, I would get the third degree about where to, who with, to do what and what time would I be back. If I said I was going for a walk, I’d get don’t be too long, which was probably code for don’t go too far, don’t get lost. And of course there were times when I did both of those things.
There still are.
There are still necessary walks and choice walks, and on the best of days even the necessary walks are pleasure walks. Walking brings us back to our ‘self’ – self in the sense of the body we inhabit, with all its restrictions and limitations, all its strengths and flexibility, self in the sense of the mind and how it looks at the world, and our ability to quieten it into the rhythm of step after step after step, self in the sense of the spirit, the part of us that we cannot define that seems to surface while we’re walking.
When the body is busy putting one foot in front of another and arresting the fall, making sure we stay more or less upright, that we do not trip, that we move forward, that we look where we’re going and hear the sounds that might speak of joy or danger, then the mind is equally busy route-finding and checking that we are where we wanted to be (or if we’re not how to get back there), or it might be gathering images for future use, pondering problems that need resolutions. Mind and body may be working together, or they may be off on their separate agenda. Either way, on a long walk we will eventually become aware of the third aspect of our self. I choose to call it soul. You can use whatever term you wish. It is that ‘identity’, that ‘self’, that ‘me’ that stands behind all the other concepts of who I might think I am, who you might think I am. Essence. Intrinsic self. The part that observes all the other aspects of self.
The thing about becoming aware of this inner self, is the very strange-ness of it. For me, it is the neutrality that arises when I hit my stride, when I stop wondering if I’m on course or not, when I stop “collecting” thoughts, images, experience…when I simply walk. I am not sure if it is a surrendering to non-feeling or to deep-feeling. It is a sense that this is rightness. Right now. Right here. Just, somehow, right.
Learning to walk is about learning how long it takes to put the brain in neutral and to settle into our natural stride. To do this we must walk alone, often. Walking with others has its own attractions and pleasures, but there is restriction in walking to someone else’s pace. They will be quicker than us or slower than us and we will try to match each other, and that creates a strain. We cannot settle into our self if we are trying to accommodate someone else.
When we walk alone, we find our own natural gait, our own pace. We discover whether uphill or downhill is easier. We discover our preference for stop-starting or keeping-going.
When we walk alone, we find out how long it takes for us to walk away from “all the stuff” and into the “other world”. And that is SO important, because it tells us how long a walk we must factor into those times when walking away from all the stuff and into the other world is what we really need to do.
When we walk alone, we can allow ramble-brain to trawl through idle memories – the reminiscences that go to make up who we are, but which are too subtle to be stories worth the telling.
When we walk alone, we give ourselves the permission to go off-track, be a puppy dog following scent trails to see where they lead. We can allow ourselves to be led. We can be open to the ideas of getting lost,of going further, or cutting it short. We can even just decide to stop and not walk: to sit on the beach for the rest of the day, or to catch a bus and go somewhere else.
When we walk alone, we give ourselves (however briefly) the gift of total freedom. We can trespass, climb trees, pick flowers, scrump fruit. We can sing loudly and out of tune. We can imagine that we are characters in our favourite stories…Regency women in long frocks and stout boots, or Hobbits on reluctant adventures, or survivors in some post-apocalyptic world. We can be fully in the world as it is or we can pretend, we can play, and be in some other one of our own imagining.
When we walk alone, we can laugh and we can cry, without having to explain why.
The stated purpose or objective for a walk is usually an invention. It is just the thing that gets us out the door. It’s just the excuse for giving ourselves this time, once we’re on our way, the way itself becomes its own purpose. No excuse required. No reason or rationalisation or justification.
I often say that sometimes a walk is just a walk.
I think I may be wrong. I think a walk is always much more than that, it is rather that we don’t always know how or why. And that is ok – so long as we do keep putting one foot in front of another, for as long as we are able, as long as we remember just what a privilege it is to be able to do so – physically, economically, politically, socially and – for the most part, unless we choose otherwise – safely.
Of the many gifts my parents gave me, a love of walking is one of the greatest. I am grateful.
