The earth spins under my feet with each step. I always seem to be on top. I walk to keep the earth rolling so that everything gets to be on top for a little while. The sugar maple with the frog faces down the sidewalk past the driveway. That house with the big porch, chairs and tea and cookies in the afternoon. The slippery steppingstones in the creek. The dip in the trail near the curve where the branches stick out...
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Long live the freedom to walk, to exist between here and there. A way to elegantly detach ourselves from responsibilities of work, family and home. Walking is time spent between realms of duty and accountability. Walking is also time spent beyond the realms of petty annoyances, preoccupations and uninspired ruts that we sometimes sink into.
Yet walking is also a sort of work that we do. The English word travel is connected to the French word, travailler to work. What sort of work is it that we do when we travel, and especially when we walk? We move our bodies through space (as well as through unique places and time), and allow ourselves opportunities to experience a wider world. So .while in certain ways seeming to detach us from everyday responsibilities, walking very literally expands our horizons and brings other pieces of life on earth into focus. The limited speed of walking and the involvement of our whole body seems to be an important part of this. Such world-expansion allows us to consider how our lives fit within the context of an interdependent earth.
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