I've been so busy with one thing or another I'm only just getting round to sharing with you what I wrote on the train on the way home from a walking conference about a month ago. Here it is, from the moment.
My brain is buzzing with the reality and romance of walking.
One step in front of the other, in our imaginations and in reality.
We walk to find places, create spaces, to travel, to arrive at a previously only dreamt about destination. We walk to remember, we walk to create, we walk to work, we walk to forget.
We walk to process and deconstruct, we walk to grieve, we walk to heal.
We walk everyday, we walk to shop, to gather, to reveal.
We walk to know ourselves, to know a stranger, to know the place once more.
We walk for something lost or for an imagined need.
We walk for peace, we walk it out, we walk slow.
We walk for well-being, for healthy hearts and minds,
We walk in doubt and we walk in certainty, with purpose and with despondency.
Our walk betrays our thoughts, our infirmaries and our vulnerabilities.
We walk to meditate, we walk to meet, we walk to the top and we walk to the bottom.
We walk to wait and we walk to continue.
We walk for friendship and we walk to discover anew.
We walk for enchantment and enlivenment.
We walk to contemplate and ruminate.
We walk for no reason at all than for the certain expression of our bodily movement that ripples through us, moving us forward.
We walk to delve deeply, we walk to share, we walk beside others in kinship and care.
We walk to follow, to lead, to show the way.
We walk to go first.
We walk away and towards ourselves.