…WALKING…

Henry David Thoreau talks about meditative walking in his famous essay ‘Walking’. In this essay he goes into great detail about the woods, the roads, the town, his neighbors, the seasons and the wildlife, all the small details you notice while walking.

In March/April I had a long hospital stay, 58 days to be exact. One of my physical therapists told me that for every day I spent in the hospital it would take about 5 days to recover, that meant almost 300 days, Yikes! When I was released, I could hardly walk to the kitchen. My strength, energy and stamina were shot.

The best thing I did was start walking. I needed a walker in the beginning but that didn’t last long, soon I was walking on my own and determined to go further every day. Walking didn’t solve all my problems, but I believe it was the catalyst for my healing process. Over the years I’ve had issues with lower back pain and found that walking was the best remedy. I had to take a medical leave of absence from work in 2008-2009 because of chronic pancreatitis. It involved a bunch of hospital stays, tons of medications and losing almost 90 pounds. When I was ready to start recovering, you guessed it I started walking again. It didn’t cure all my ills but it was the catalyst that got everything moving in the right direction. Improved my appetite, helped with sleeping and cleared the tangles in my head.

Highway of regret

There aren’t many creatures that walk on 2 feet or legs, we’re very unique. And I think it’s that feature that separates us and makes us exceptional. It’s a gift. From the beginning of time, humans have walked wherever they went. But more than transportation, it’s therapeutic, healing. Our ability to walk on 2 legs transcends our ability to understand how healthy it is for our bodies, our minds and our souls.

Henry David Thoreau once wrote “Let me live where I will, on this side is the city, on that the wilderness, and ever I am leaving the city more and more, and withdrawing into the wilderness.”

There is a subtle magnetism in nature which if we yield to it will direct us in the right direction. Just being outside is powerful in our healing process. So, what I’d like to say is step #1 is step #1, get out there and start walking. No need to buy expensive equipment, take lessons or buy a membership.

Over the past few years I rode my bike, a lot! Nearly 2,500 miles in just two years. Intermittently I took days off from riding and walked or hiked instead. I love both but walking is more medicinal than riding.

The health benefits are numerous:

1. Bolster your brain
2. Add years to your life
3. Ward off depression
4. Sleep better
5. Trim inches of your waistline
6. Helps to save your vision

An Excerpt from Henry David Thoreaus’ essay ‘Walking’I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks – who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering, which word is beautifully derived “from idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked charity, under pretense of going a la Sainte Terre,” to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, “There goes a Sainte-Terrer,” a Saunterer, a Holy-Lander. They who never go to the Holy Land in their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds; but they who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean. . . [For] every walk is a sort of crusade, preached by some Peter the hermit in us, to go forth and reconquer this Holy Land from the hands of the Infidels.

I believe our ability to walk the way that we do transcends our ability to understand it. It’s more than locomotion, it’s physical, mental and spiritual. The simple motion of walking connects us to origins of our uniqueness.

As a side note, tread lightly. Move gracefully across the earth and treat it as you would fine art. Be gentle, take only pictures and leave no trace.