A simple joy and peace comes from walking, whether alone or with someone close, says Julian Kwasniewski.
Walking with the sun on your back; with the breeze in your hair; with the blue sky in your eyes. Walking with the wind in your ears. This is unadulterated walking. This is human walking. This is a way of walking we need to recover.
Having recently moved back to my hometown in Wyoming, I can once again walk everywhere I need to go. Coffee shops, public library, Catholic chapel and river are all within 10 minutes walk of my apartment. Grocery stores and friends’ houses are within a 20-minute stroll. Many of my fellow townsmen regularly run errands or recreate on foot.
I could drive, though. It would save a little time. Or I could listen to music while walking. Why should I let 30 minutes of my day be taken up with walking from one place to another? And why shouldn’t I enhance it with a soundtrack? Because we must be in touch with the primary reality of crea-tion. If we do not walk “raw”, there are a host of joys we will never know.
What are these joys? They are at the heart of the reasonable contentment of which the great Hillaire Belloc speaks in The Path to Rome. Having attended an early morning Mass while on a walking pilgrimage, Belloc tries to explain why he felt contented and satisfied. He writes:
“The most important cause of this feeling of satisfaction is that you are doing what the human race has done for thousands upon thousands upon thousands of years. This is a matter of such moment that I am astonished people hear of it so little. Whatever is buried right into our blood from immemorial habit that we must be certain to do if we are to be fairly happy (of course no grown man or woman can really be very happy for long – but I mean reasonably happy), and, what is more important, decent and secure of our souls. Thus one should from time to time hunt animals, or at the very least shoot at a mark; one should always drink some kind of fermented liquor with one’s food – and especially deeply upon great feast-days; one should go on the water from time to time; and one should dance on occasions; and one should sing in chorus. For all these things man has done since God put him into a garden and his eyes first became troubled with a soul.”
Just so walking – if we would be reasonably content human beings, we must let the feel of wind in our hair and the sun on our skin. We must experience the heat and cold, the humidity of summer and the chill of winter. We must know the sound of water, grass in the wind, laughter in the distance, and birdsong.
Unadulterated walking is a door to simple and mysterious pleasures; without it, would I have seen snowflakes settling like stars in the long, dark hair of a lady friend? Or caught the tracery of veins in a dried leaf illumined by sunlight? Or found myself surrounded by a flock of sheep on a hillside path in Italy? Seen herons hunting fish in a lake? Touched the crackling, pale green lichen on a sun-warmed rock while hiking?
Walking facilitates true conversation. How many conversations has strolling facilitated? Whether with priest or parent, friend or lover, walking often eases tension when we have to speak of weighty matters. Conversely, walking enhances utterly frivolous conversations with friends: laughing and reminiscing of nothings while strolling along a river or forest doesn’t tire the way it would if one were lounging on a sofa or hammock.
Walking reveals nature. Belloc notes: “Indeed, this is the peculiar virtue of walking to a far place, and especially of walking there in a straight line, that one gets these visions of the world from hill-tops.” As I have already said, walking allows a pace and place where we can encounter nature on its own terms and scale. The size of creation is something we can almost only experience on foot. Whether a tiny seed pod or a towering cliff, a photograph will never replace a personal encounter. Standing beneath hundreds of feet of towering cliffs last week in a nearby canyon, I was reminded of this fact: the awe, scale and weight of the rock above me pressed on my smallness. Saturated with magnitude, wonder stirred in my soul.
Walking is a protection for thought. The early morning or late evening walk, alone, soothes the brain and promotes clarity of thought. Fresh air clears the brain, while the sight of plants, stones and animals refreshes common sense in the fevered brain. Sitting alone and brooding is often a pathway to depression when walking allows the same reflections to be tempered with the joy of nature.
Walking eases romance. How many lovers have wooed while walking? Walking is the setting for that dignified and beautiful custom of the woman taking her man’s arm. Less direct than holding hands, more discreet than embracing, walking arm in arm allows the couple to match pace, speak slowly and encounter the beauty of nature side by side. And of course, the sparkling gem of marriage proposals are often set in the golden band of a quiet walk.
Walking is a haven for prayer. If sitting and praying the rosary from start to finish seems an interminable chore, perhaps slowly walking in a garden or park will alleviate the mental fatigue of the repeated prayer. Again, when walking allows encounter with nature, it also can reveal trans-cendence with the corresponding soar of the soul to God. As St Thérèse famously said: “For me, prayer is a surge of the heart; it is a simple look turned toward heaven, it is a cry of recognition and of love, embracing both trial and joy.” How many who struggle to pray realise that gazing on a range of mountains, rosy with a sunset, is a doorway to this sort of prayer?
Finally, besides the most excellent and desirable benefits described above, walking provides gentlemen with a unique opportunity to use three important accessories: the pipe, the walking stick and the hat. But eulogising these must be saved for another time. For the moment (as Dickens said), “walk and be happy”.
Such is the beginning of a poetic defence of “raw” walking. Of course this all assumes access to nature, rather than acres of sprawling urban concrete. For those of us who live in such wastes, an especial effort must be made to seek out places of nature and walk in them on a regular basis. “Walking is a man’s best medicine,” said Hippocrates. In an age when we hear everything but the real in our headphones, see everything but the real on our screens and touch everything but the real in our synthetic cities, reasonable happiness will forever be out of reach unless we begin to walk rightly. Shall we walk? Shall we listen as we walk, look as we walk, touch as we walk? When you hear the gilded leaves rustle, see snowflakes nestle in her hair, or feel the warmth though rough rock – then you will know the joy of which Belloc speaks.
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