For most of the week, I just could not seem to get motivated to get outside. I did but, it didn’t bring the joy and relief that my walks normally do. Whether it was the continuing and overbearing sense of gloom that is our lives during the CV-19 pandemic or whether I was just feeling lazy, I don’t know.
I wrote earlier in the week about an email from my friend Nigel where he described having a Camino on his doorstep. At first, even that sort of wore on me. I guess I was feeling sorry for myself, I didn’t have that beautiful countryside just out my door.
This week, I also finished re-reading Walking, One Step At A Time by Erling Kagge. It was a gift from my friend Katja and one that I will probably re-read again (is that a thing?). It’s not a particularly long book and it’s not a difficult read but, it is packed with insight and I didn’t feel as if I’d captured enough from it on the first read.
Towards the end of the book, page 157 in my edition, Kagge writes “The ability to walk, to put one foot in front of the other, invented us.” In context, he was writing about Homo Sapiens having not invented walking, a far earlier relative did. But walking inspired us as creatures to do extraordinary things, to explore.
Reading that and then thinking about Nigel’s Camino made me think about the many places I’ve never walked in Dallas which is another point in Kagge’s book, walking your city and other cities.
So, this morning, I got up, read the paper and took off to explore my neighborhood and others around it. Earlier, I wrote about the CHG in his narrowboat discovering a city he’d been to many times and I compared it to walking across Spain and seeing it at eye level and in “real” time, not in a car.
I walked about 5 miles/8km down tree lined streets, through 100-year-old neighborhoods and I greeted everyone that I saw. Some acknowledged me, others pretended not to hear, one stared at me and a few took the opportunity to expand the meaning of social distancing. It didn’t bother me a bit as a matter of fact, it inspired me to continue to do it.
Kagge talks about walking and preparing to walk which for those that don’t do it regularly it’s often the most difficult part. When I first started training to walk the Camino de Santiago, we’d walk what I now consider a short distance and we’d be tired. As we started, our hearts seemed like they were pounding, we labored to breathe, and we sweat.
The body is a funny thing, if you continue to walk, even on that first walk, the body adapts. Your heart rate drops, your breathing calms and while you still sweat, especially here in Texas, you sweat far less. We adapt. Exactly as Kagge describes.
As important, your mind begins to slow down and you begin to hear, see, smell, feel and enjoy your surroundings, at least I do. I did today on my urban neighborhood hike. As I walked, my inspiration began to return and by the time I was home, I was planning my exploration of the University Crossing Trail.
In these times it’s easy to get sucked into the vortex of negativity, for me anyway. So, to paraphrase Hippocrates, if you feel poorly, go for a walk. If you still do, go for another.
Thanks to my friends for the inspiration and motivation, it came at exactly the right time for me.