Where did the idea for Place Odyssey and the Art of Walking come from, anyway?

The idea was born on a miserable, dusty, entirely-uphill trail in the backcountry of Yosemite National Park by a ranger-naturalist on a day off. She woke up grumpy (yes, this is even possible living in the incredible High Country of Yosemite with the best job in the world). She went for a long walk. Her angst dissolved into aching legs. 

She spotted a bright orange feather. She knelt down to get a closer look. When she stood up again, granite sand stuck to her knees, little bits of quartz, feldspar, mica and hornblende. She bumped her head on the branch of a lodgepole pine and a dragonfly darted within millimeters of her left ear. 

Soon the season would end and she and most of the other ranger-naturalists would disperse back out beyond the national park, where the world is generally treated less reverently. She would put away the rich stories of place that she translated for seeking visitors and she would walk through the world pretending to be unfettered by roots and branches reaching out into the landscape and communities around her until she could return to Yosemite the next season.

Next thing she knew, she was glowing in the spirit of a large chunk of granite that she was traversing. She had forgotten why she was grumpy and had a revelation that our great reverence for “where we are,” that many are lucky to find in national parks, has a lot to do with walking and with stories.   

Since the first protection of Yosemite in 1864,many  millions of people from around the world have made pilgrimages there and mythologized the place and name through art, literature, and advertising. We have made it and other national parks sacred places while neglecting many of the places that we live and depend on for survival and quality of life.

She remembered the words of one who had walked there before her….”if you try to pull out any one thing in the universe, you’ll find it connected to everything else.” (That was John Muir, by the way.) 

So why not become a ranger-naturalist of the world? And that’s what she set out to do.

Place Odyssey and the Art of Walking is an act of conscious movement towards making the lives we live on earth the stuff of beautiful stories. It is an experiment in better acquainting ourselves with the world we live in, one step at a time.

All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.  Friedrich Nietzsche

In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.  John Muir

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