There have been some rather remarkable walkers throughout history. Charles Dickens was known to walk hours at a time, sometimes throughout the night, his dazzling shape-sifting imagination working away. Jean-Jacques Rousseau too, a distant relative of mine, very distant to be sure if you were to look at my current walking regimen, was another, and then, of course, Henry David Thoreau. 

Tonight I was reading an essay on walking written by Thoreau when I happened on the following passage: “When a traveler asked (William) Wordsworth’s servant to show him her master’s study, she answered, “Here is his library, but his study is out of doors.”” There is something familiar and spiritually delicious there. As if we are being allowed a peek into something ineffably special. I am by no means unique when I say that immersing oneself in nature brings you about as close to God, or higher power, or essence of life as you can get. You are dipping into nature’s design, untrammeled by the whims of humankind.

Since I was a boy I’ve had and still have a wonderful relationship with nature. There is a kind of freedom to free spirit walking, the body warming up, settling into its own rhythm, and then the mind opens, ideas move into the open, perhaps carried on the mellifluous song of a bird, or the rhythmic percussion of  tree branches dancing in the breeze, or the joyous beat of the heart you feel when a baby rabbit darts into the open, gives you a quick look, the disappears so quickly you wonder if you even saw it in the first place. Your mind, heart and spirit open, and you are alive, joyously so.

Life is good. Live it. It’s here for you too.

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