The Value of a Walk

I am forty-four years old. I have walked for at least forty-three of those years, but only for the past five or so with any kind of intention. In the first period of my life walking was a practical necessity. As a child it was to get from place to place, from toy to toy, to wriggle outside of a caring adult's grasp. In my teenage years it was to get as far as the couch so I could watch television, or from my place of leisure to step into a car to get me where I wanted to go. As a young adult in college it was to walk from class to class or to visit a friend's room or to get to the business office to take care of a student bill. After college my walking consisted of what it took to get me where I needed to go. It was a sedentary existence.

By the time my young adult years began to fade into this place called "middle age," I was married with multiple children requiring me to walk for more than my own purposes. In the middle of the night when one of our young kids was sick it was a walk that brought me to their crib so that I could pick him up and comfort him. As the cook in the family my walks would be often to the refrigerator, the cook top and the sink, multiple times every day. As our kids have grown up their experiences have increased, so my walks have taken me to sporting events, school conferences, and occasionally, the court room.

In the past few years the walk experience has taken on a new significance. What was once a pedantic, routine, pragmatic task has become something I need to do with intention, so that while I still walk to do all the regular things a person does, I also walk to help discern my life's direction and to prove to myself, day by day, that no two days are quite the same.

I have always been a person easily distracted and bored. I resent repetitious action and formulaic approaches to tasks or life. I could not live in a world that is simply a series of repeating cycles time and again. The chaos of nature and the world around me is refreshing and exhilirating. So often I find that it is my walk that fires the spark of imagination, or soothes the complicated fabric of my soul or offers me a deeper understanding of my spiritual journey.

This blog will exist as a place to share memorable walk experiences. I will record my observations of nature and my growing personal awareness and will guide those who wish to discover, as I do every day, the value of a walk.