The Robbi Route

There is so much I LOVE about walking!!  From the simple fact that ambulation is a gift not to be taken lightly or for granted – to the grand expansion and exposure experienced on the journey: physically, visually, audibly, spiritually, mentally, intellectually, metaphysically and often relationally!  

Certainly there is a practicality to walking and I love having the time and inclination to walk rather than to drive – to medical, financial, and volunteer appointments (remember, I am retired) – avoiding time and consternation in traffic, the stress of finding and paying for parking spots, not to mention saving the gas dollars…

Yet it becomes so much more – an investigation into, and, an investment in my relationship to the world and – simultaneously being present in the moment.

My daughter gifted me a Most Amazing book by Rebecca Solnit, “Wanderlust: A History of Walking”. It is a tome and Giant Genuflect to All Things Walking. And believe it or not, this encompasses more than a normal human would imagine!! Please, read it!! Well, to be honest, many might find it boring (my five year old granddaughter just told me so) yet I found it fascinating and will reread it many times!

“Where does it start? Muscles tense. One leg a pillar, holding the body upright between the earth and sky. The other a pendulum, swinging from behind. Heel touches down. The whole weight of the body rolls forward onto the ball of the foot. The big toe pushes off, and the delicately balanced weight of the body shifts again. The legs reverse position. It starts with a step and then another step and then another that add up like taps on a drum to a rhythm, the rhythm of walking. The most obvious and the most obscure thing in the world, this walking that wanders so readily into religion, philosophy, landscape, urban policy, anatomy, allegory, and heartbreak.”

I Love To Walk!  Not only that, I am happy that I love to walk!! It is an inexpensive hobby (generally) that can lend positive input across-the-board into so many aspects of life!  

Another quote from Rebecca Solnit, “The rhythm of walking generates a kind of rhythm of thinking, and the passage through a landscape echoes or stimulates the passage through a series of thoughts. The creates an odd consonance between internal and external passage, one that suggests that the mind is also a landscape of sorts and that walking is one way to traverse it. A new thought often seems like a feature of the landscape that was there all along, as though thinking were traveling rather than making.”

I Love that by walking what I encounter can be radical AND deeply ordinary.  Walking CAN (if we partner with it) remove us from life’s routines. It teaches us how to move through life differently. With more attention. With less demand. With more gratitude for the people and places we touch. It teaches us how sacred ordinary life can become when we move through it awake.

I have another walking adventure right around the corner! Actually, walking is quite a regular adventure in my life, so what’s that mean??! It means – I’m going back to Spain! To be continued!!