Ambulo Ergo Sum

Chapel above Digne-les-Bains (Wikimedia).

In response to the philosopher René Descartes' famous saying, Cogito ergo sum ('I think, therefore I am'), his 17th-century contemporary Pierre Gassendi replied, Ambulo ergo sum ('I walk, therefore I am.') Gassendi had a serious point: mind and body are inseparable, in Gassendi's view, whereas Descartes believed that the mind could exist separately from the body. The act of walking perfectly illustrates the intimate mind-body connection that Gassendi had in mind. Inspired by Gassendi, the Dutch artist, Hermann de Vries, constructed an installation near Digne-les-Bains, France, Gassendi's home. He created a path up a steep mountain-side, marked with gold-tipped spikes and a stone on which are painted the words, Ambulo ergo sum. De Vries wanted the path to be difficult so that the body and mind of the walker would register the effort required.

Walk 21

Digne-les-Bains, capital of the French department of Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, is also the site of a trail connecting a series of stone sculptures and walkers' refuges which were designed and constructed by British land artist, Andy Goldsworthy.

The Old Ways

Much has been written of travel, far less of the road. EDWARD THOMAS The Icknield Way (1913)

My eyes were in my feet . . . NAN SHEPHERD The Living Mountain (1977)

All things are engaged in writing their history . . . Not a foot steps into the snow, or along the ground, but prints in characters more or less lasting, a map of its march. The ground is all memoranda and signatures; and every object covered over with hints. In nature, this self-registration is incessant, and the narrative is the print of the seal. RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1850)  

Robert Macfarlane's book The Old Ways is one of the finest books on walking I've ever read. Though it's about so much more than walking — it's about the whole world. Everything is contained in and fans out from the paths we take, whether our journey lies inwards or outwards. The tracks we make, our footprints in the snow, are our witness and record, our narrative and our history.

This book could not have been written by sitting still. The relationship between paths, walking and the imagination is its subject, and much of its thinking was therefore done — was only possible — while on foot. Although it is the third book in a loose trilogy about landscape and the human heart, it need not be read after or in the company of its predecessors. It tells the story of walking a thousand miles or more along old ways in search of a route to the past, only to find myself delivered again and again to the contemporary. It is an exploration of the ghosts and voices that haunt ancient paths, of the tales that tracks keep and tell, of pilgrimage and trespass, of songlines and their singers and of the strange continents that exist within countries. Above all, this is a book about people and place: about walking as a reconnoitre inwards, and the subtle ways in which we are shaped by the landscapes through which we move.

ROBERT MACFARLANE The Old Ways, Author's Note

The Disappearing Line

The Solitary Walker on Hadrian's Wall. (Photo taken by George at Transit Notes.)

Walking was not always considered the normal, pleasurable, everyday activity that it is now. In eighteenth-century England the foot traveller could be viewed with suspicion and disdain:   

A traveller on foot in this country seems to be considered as a sort of wild man or an out-of-the-way being who is stared at, pitied, suspected, and shunned by every body that meets him . . . 

In England any person undertaking so long a journey on foot is sure to be looked upon and considered as either a beggar, or a vagabond, or some necessitous wretch, which is a character not much more popular than that of a rogue . . . 

To what various, singular, and unaccountable fatalities and adventures are not foot-travellers exposed, in this land of carriages and horses?

CARL PHILIPP MORITZ

This all changed with the Romantic writers and poets. Wordsworth (and his sister Dorothy), Coleridge, Hazlitt and De Quincey were all prodigious walkers. This extract is from Wordsworth's The Prelude — for me one of the finest poems ever written. Whenever I read the words 'its disappearing line' and 'a guide into eternity, / At least to things unknown and without bound' I get an excited thrill:

I love a public road: few sights there are

That please me more: such object hath had power

O'er my imagination since the dawn

Of childhood, when its disappearing line,

Seen daily afar off, on one bare steep

Beyond the limits that my feet had trod,

Was like a guide into eternity,

At least to things unknown and without bound.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

Hazlitt's essay On Going a Journey is a key piece of writing for the solo, independent walker:

One of the pleasantest things in the world is going a journey; but I like to go by myself. I can enjoy society in a room; but out of doors, Nature is company enough for me. I am then never less alone than when alone . . .

I cannot see the wit of walking and talking at the same time. When I am in the country I wish to vegetate like the country. I am not for criticising hedgerows and black cattle. I go out of town in order to forget the town and all that is in it. There are those who for this purpose go to watering-places, and carry the metropolis with them. I like more elbow-room and fewer encumbrances. I like solitude . . .

The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, feel, do, just as one pleases. We go a journey chiefly to be free of all impediments and of all inconveniences; to leave ourselves behind much more than to get rid of others. It is because I want a little breathing-space to muse on indifferent matters . . . that I absent myself from the town for a while, without feeling at a loss the moment I am left by myself . . .

Give me the clear blue sky over my head, and the green turf beneath my feet, a winding road before me, and a three hours march to dinner — and then to thinking! I laugh I run, I leap, I sing for joy.

WILLIAM HAZLITT

One of my New Year's resolutions is to do more walking in 2014 than I did in 2013.

A Happy New Year to everyone, and happy walking!

(All the above passages are taken from that excellent book by Morris Marples, Shanks's Pony: a Study of Walking, first published in 1959.)  

At Home Nowhere And Everywhere

I wish to speak a word a word for Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil — to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society. I wish to make an extreme statement, if so I may make a emphatic one, for there are enough champions of civilization: the minister and the school-committee and every one of you will take care of that.

I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks — who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering, which word is beautifully derived 'from idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked charity, under pretense of going à la Saint Terre' — to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, 'There goes a Sainte-Terrer', a saunterer, a Holy-Lander. They who never go to the Holy Land in their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds, but they who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean. Some, however, would derive the word from sans terre, without land or a home, which, therefore, in the good sense, will mean, having no particular home, but equally at home everywhere. For this is the secret of successful sauntering. He who sits still in a house all the time may be the greatest vagrant of all; but the saunterer, in the good sense, is no more vagrant than the meandering river, which is all the while sedulously seeking the shortest course to the sea. But I prefer the first, which, indeed, is the most probable derivation. For every walk is a sort of crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit in us, to go forth and reconquer this Holy Land from the hands of the Infidels.

It is true, we are but faint-hearted crusaders, even the walkers, nowadays, who undertake no persevering never-ending enterprises. Our expeditions are but tours and come round again at evening to the old hearth side from which we set out. Half the walk is but retracing our steps. We should go forth on the shortest walk, perchance, in the spirit of undying adventure, never to return; prepared to send back our embalmed hearts only as relics to our desolate kingdoms. If you are ready to leave father and mother, and brother and sister, and wife and child and friends, and never see them again — if you have paid your debts, and made your will, and settled all your affairs, and are a free man — then you are ready for a walk.

HENRY DAVID THOREAU Walking.

Also recommended is Thoreau's essay A Winter Walk.

Via Francigena

The Via Francigena is a 1900 km pilgrim trail from Canterbury to Rome. It takes you across the English Channel, through north-eastern France and Switzerland, over the Alps by the Great St Bernard Pass, then down through northern Italy to the 'Eternal City'. Recently I walked 42 km along this historic route.

Canterbury Cathedral, start of the Via Francigena. Here the cathedral's Welcome Office stamped my pilgrim 'passport'.

So is this where elderly pilgrims end up? Rather a depressing thought.

Pilgrim ways pass through unsightly areas as well as picturesque ones. You have to take the rough with the smooth.

From Canterbury to Dover the Via Francigena follows the course of the North Downs Way.

In Kent many oast houses (buildings for drying hops as part of the brewing process) have been turned into private dwellings.

The Way cut straight as a die through corn fields and poppy fields, though the roar of cars on the parallel-running A2 was annoyingly persistent. That first night I pitched my tent right by the path on a piece of turf surrounded by inquisitive hens and geese. The smallholder had kindly allowed me to camp there. Leaving the village of Sherperdswell the next morning, it was only a further 10 km to Dover. 

The white cliffs of Dover en route to the ferry.

On the other side of the Channel I found Calais a bit of a dump. The food was mediocre, and even the wine was poor. Was my love affair with France coming to an end? This photo shows the back view of Rodin's 'The Burghers of Calais'. 

The theatre at Calais — closed for renovation.

Calais' Hôtel de Ville — not my favourite building in the world but, apart from the theatre, the only building of any distinction in Calais. I stayed at the youth hostel near the sea front. No one had changed the sheets, and I slept on thousands of grains of sand.

On the third day I made for Guînes along the Canal de Calais à Guînes. Hot sunshine had hit northern Europe, but I found the intense heat debilitating and strength-sapping. With its extra contents of tent, stove, sleeping bag and sleeping mat, my backpack was punishingly heavy. I camped that night at La Bien Assise, an excellent campsite at Guînes. It was free to pilgrims.

In the morning, after an uncomfortable night in my cramped tent, I examined my wounds: one blister, two blackened toenails, a strained muscle in my lower back, a general feeling of exhaustion, lethargy and loneliness. I'd also gone completely deaf in one ear — a problem to which I'm prone due to a build-up of cerumen. And I was developing a cold.

I'd intended walking for perhaps a week or two, but knew I could not go on. I also had problems at home which I'd escaped and not resolved. After a few days and nights in Belgium, in the fine cities of Bruges and Ghent, which I reached by train, I headed back home...

Mindful Walking (3)

A human foot carved in limestone in Egypt around 600 BC.

. . . Take a look at your feet: the slanting row of toes, the ball, the arch, the heel, the ankle. Why don't you admire them? Go even further — love them! Why not? They are beautiful. Think of what they do for you. They are masterpieces of design; they are miracles. Stand up on them. Sway forwards a little, then backwards, then from side to side. See how you balance. You could not do this without them. Be conscious of how your body is standing upright, erect, the centre of gravity running straight from the top of your head through your spine and pelvis and legs right down to your feet. Watch how the mind controls what the body does. Wriggle your toes. Stand on tiptoe. Rock back on your heels. Bend your legs, one after the other, flexing the Achilles tendon. Your legs and your whole body are supported and balanced by your feet. It feels good, doesn't it?

Step out of the bedroom. What freedom you have on your own two feet, what choices, what infinite possibilities! You could take them — or they could take you — across the landing to the bathroom or into another bedroom. You could move them downstairs into the kitchen or the living room or the garden. Or down the street and round the park and into the shops. Or up the hill and through the woods and by the lake and past the crossroads and along the river as far as the sea. And beyond the ocean there's Yssingeaux, Xanadu, Morocco, Samarkand . . . 

Don't try putting on your socks just yet. Why don't you go barefoot for a while? It's normal, it's natural, it's liberating. We don't walk barefoot enough. We lose touch with our feet, our beautiful feet, in thick socks which make them hot and sweaty. We encase them in ill-fitting footwear, fashionable and expensive shoes and boots, which cause them suffering and deformity. We pervert four million years of evolution by forcing our feet into unnatural contortions. Go barefoot for a while and taste the freedom. Feel how directly and naturally the heel and the ball of the foot touch the wooden floorboards, the cool tiles, the lush carpet, the dew-laden grass. Feel how the skin loves this contact, and hardens a little to protect itself, yet remains sensitive to all the textures and temperatures of the ground surface . . .

(Image from Wikimedia Commons.)

Mindful Walking (2)

The human foot is a masterpiece of engineering and a work of art. LEONARDO DA VINCI

The feet of the Solitary Walker encased in a pair of Keen walking sandals.

Where does it start? Muscles tense. One leg a pillar, holding the body upright between the earth and sky. The other a pendulum, swinging from behind. Heel touches down. The whole weight of the body rolls forward onto the ball of the foot. The big toe pushes off, and the delicately balanced weight of the body shifts again. The legs reverse position. It starts with a step and then another step and then another that add up like taps on a drum to a rhythm, the rhythm of walking. The most obvious and the most obscure thing in the world, this walking that wanders so readily into religion, philosophy, landscape, urban policy, anatomy, allegory, and heartbreak. REBECCA SOLNIT Wanderlust: A History Of Walking

You don't have to embark on a long and significant trek before engaging in a bit of mindful walking. You only need swing your legs out of bed in the morning, plant them on the floor, and you can begin.

But first let us consider briefly the human foot, that masterpiece of engineering and work of art. It's a wonderful, remarkable thing — one of the most complex mechanical structures in the human anatomy. The foot comprises twenty-six bones (only the hand has more, one more to be exact), thirty-three joints (twenty of them articulated) and over one hundred muscles, tendons and ligaments. The hands and feet alone contain more than half the total number of bones in the human body, and just two bones in each foot carry the bulk of its whole weight.

It's taken four million years of evolution to walk upright. Walking on two legs distinguishes us from the rest of the animal kingdom (ok, birds and kangaroos also manage on two legs, but they hop rather than walk, and use their tails for balance). This miracle of bipedalism was an essential evolutionary step forward in the development of the hominid, leading to our present unique human shape: straight toes, arched feet, long straight legs and spine, flat stomach, flexible waist, low shoulders and erect head.

Now back to those feet on the bedroom floor . . .

Click here for Mindful Walking (1)

(Click here for the daily Turnstone quote.)

Poetry And Walking

When my sister and only sibling, Elizabeth, died from a brain tumour at the age of 29 in August 1987, I found myself turning to poetry for succour, consolation and a deeper view of things. I called on Keats, Coleridge, Wordsworth and other English Romantic poets; I visited Lorca, Levertov and RS Thomas. I also began walking more and more, and further and further. In the simple act of walking, in the natural human activity of placing one foot in front of the other, I encountered a kind of fragile peace; and the sublime scenery I often walked through seemed to provide, at least partly, a benign and numinous response to my unanswerable questions.

I kept a written log of my walking routes from April 1987 to May 2006. Looking at it again recently, I'm reminded that a few weeks after my sister's death Carmen and I stayed for a while in Porthmadog (Wales), where I climbed the little hill of Moel-y-Gest and the mountain of Cnicht, and ascended the Roman Steps from Cwm Bychan. The landscape here in Snowdonia is wild, dramatic and breathtakingly beautiful.

My mother, Joan, died in November 2004, and again I turned to poetry: this time to the poems she'd  transferred to her commonplace books in a painstaking and neat hand, or cut out from magazines with scissors and pasted into her scrapbooks; and also those chosen by WB Yeats for The Oxford Book Of Modern Verse 1892-1935. Mum had been awarded this book as a prize for 'General Proficiency' at the end of her 1937-8 year at The Municipal High School for Girls in Doncaster, Yorkshire.

Three years later I completed my first Camino, and lit candles in memory of my sister and mum at various significant stages along the Way. Here's the wonderfully crazy signpost at Manjarin in the Spanish Montes de León:

My father, Fred, died in January 2009, and almost exactly one year later I walked the Vía de la Plata. I dedicated this Camino to him. We did not have an easy relationship, but all is now more peaceable. The last words he spoke to me were: 'You know I love you, Robert'.

Dad did not appreciate the finer subtleties of poetry as such, but he did love the words to the Wesleyan hymns he played on the organ each week at the Methodist village chapel. Only the other day I was leafing through his Methodist Hymn Book and alighted on John Bunyan's Who Would True Valour See (from Pilgrim's Progress):

Who would true Valour see
Let him come hither;
One here will Constant be,
Come Wind, come Weather.
There's no Discouragement,
Shall make him once Relent,
His first avow'd Intent,
To be a Pilgrim.

(The Monk's Gate arrangement by Vaughan Williams, adapted from a traditional English melody.)

Needless to say, he also loved the words of the Bible, and of course the words of the Authorised King James Version are poetry indeed. This is the title page of one of his Bibles:

Poetry and walking have been my salvation in the most challenging of times. There are times when I feel they have actually saved my life, or kept me sane at the very least.

Sorrow

Why does the thin grey strand
Floating up from the forgotten
Cigarette between my fingers,
Why does it trouble me?

Ah, you will understand;
When I carried my mother downstairs,
A few times only, at the beginning
Of her soft-foot malady,

I should find, for a reprimand
To my gaiety, a few long grey hairs
On the breast of my coat; and one by one
I let them float up the dark chimney.

DH LAWRENCE

(Collected by WB Yeats in The Oxford Book Of Modern Verse 1892-1935.)

Urban Walking

Put bluntly: deprived of mechanised means of locomotion — the car, the bus, the train — and without the aid of technology, the majority of urbanites, who constitute the vast majority of Britons, neither know where they are, nor are capable of getting somewhere else under their own power.

Nor even yet are they able to formulate the desire to do such a thing. So far as they are concerned, the journeys to work, to shop, to be entertained, to liaise with their social circle are all the utilisation of the built environment — such unpremeditated and willed walking as there is remains within these contexts, the most egregious example being the shopping mall itself. Yet a little over a century ago, 90% of Londoners' journeys under six miles were still made on foot — many of these would have been commutes, but even a walk to work involves a physical possession of the built environment and the exercise of orienting skills.

Year on year, the number of journeys taken on foot declines — indeed, on current projections walking will have died out altogether as a means of transport by the middle of this century.

WILL SELF (From his inaugural lecture as Professor of Contemporary Thought at Brunel University)

Le Flâneur by PAUL GAVARNI, 1842

When I spent a weekend in London recently, it didn't even occur to me to take a bus, tube or taxi. I simply walked. It seemed the natural thing to do. Evidently I'm in the minority.

According to a lecture by novelist and social commentator Will Self to students at Brunel University, urban walking is declining year on year, and could one day die out completely. What's more, if you look closely at your fellow walkers in an urban environment, you'll notice a strange thing: most of these walkers have ears attached to MP3 players and eyes glued to smartphones. Some are even navigating their way using GPS apps. They are just enough aware of their physical surroundings to avoid collisions with other walkers, vehicles, street furniture; but their actual, sensual, perceptual awareness of the environment has been reduced to a blocked-out minimum. Self believes such walkers are in a condition similar to psychosis.

I find this a sinister, frightening state of affairs. We are losing the ability to do the most natural and healthy thing in the world: to place one foot in front of the other and explore what's around us without distraction. We are losing the capability of finding our own, self-chosen way as we become increasingly dependent on Sat Navs and GPS systems. (I've noticed that the skills of navigating by intuition, by natural signs and markers, and by map reading are all atrophying in younger generations.) We are losing our sense of space, distance and perspective as we divorce ourselves from the real world and become ever more immersed in a virtual one.

I myself love strolling through cities, soaking up the atmosphere, setting myself little route-finding challenges, discovering hidden squares and alleyways, wandering at will. There is no greater freedom or enjoyment. Even in stores and hotels I usually take the stairs, rarely the lift. I just don't want to be reliant  on mechanical transport. I want the freedom and independence of my own two feet where I can and for as long as I can.

So it seems that the flâneur is morphing into the techno-navigateur. Are we all now bi-pedally doomed?

(Click here for my latest post at Turnstone and here for my latest post at words and silence.)

Alone But Not Lonely

Hear and attend and listen; for this befell and behappened and became and was, O my Best Beloved, when the Tame animals were wild. The Dog was wild, and the Horse was wild, and the Cow was wild, and the Sheep was wild, and the Pig was wild - as wild as wild could be - and they walked in the Wet Wild Woods by their wild lones. But the wildest of all the wild animals was the Cat. He walked by himself, and all places were alike to him. RUDYARD KIPLING The Cat That Walked By Himself  (Just So Stories)

I prefer walking alone when taking long walks or making long pilgrimages. Why is this? I've been considering the reasons. I'm not anti-social, nor some weird 'loner' (well, perhaps a tiny bit!) I like people. I enjoy conversation. Why would I wish to embark on a long, sometimes scary and hazardous journey, alone? 

Well, first of all, there are some nakedly selfish reasons. The fact is, no matter how entertaining and sympathetic, lovely and beloved your companion, walking with another person over a long stretch of time and distance can become wearisome. I'm being brutally honest here. Alone you have total freedom: to go where you want, when you want, how fast or how slow you want. With a companion - delightful as he or she may be - you have to compromise. Yes - compromise is, of course, essential and right in so many parts of our lives, in our relationships, in our marriages, in our dealings with society. Compromise, give and take, the Middle Way are the oils which lubricate the smooth workings of a successful community, a successful relationship. But isn't it nice just to be totally free for a while, not to compromise, to do exactly as one likes?

Then there's the question of loneliness. People ask me: don't you ever get lonely on your solo trips? The truthful answer is: sometimes, yes! On my last pilgrimage along the Via de la Plata I met hardly any other walkers (no doubt they were all far more sensible than I, and hadn't even dreamt of tackling this route during the wettest Spanish winter in living memory). However I find that serious pangs of loneliness are short-lived. Normally there are other walkers to chat with and accompany for short distances. There are friendly shops and bars and albergues. Usually I feel 'alone' rather than 'lonely'. And that's no bad thing. Facing up to, accepting, enjoying our natural, existential solitude is actually, I think, an important, even necessary thing to do, and prepares us for bleak periods in our life (like times of illness, depression or bereavement) when a state of aloneness is forced upon us rather than deliberately chosen.    

How many of us are completely at ease with our own thoughts, comfortably at home in own own minds and bodies? I know I'm not always in this ideal state. Far from it. So solitary walking gives me the chance to explore a little the murky depths of my own mind, to clear some weeds from the muddy pool of my unconscious, to sort out my ideas and beliefs, to shine a little light into my soul, to reflect on God and the nature of life, death and the universe. And, with luck, to meet up with some interesting people, and enjoy a few beers with them along the Way ...   

Walking, Art And Nature (10)



Camino, Spain


I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend four hours a day at least - and it is commonly more than that - sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from all worldly engagements. THOREAU Walking

The political philosopher and educationalist Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) believed that human beings were inherently good, and that they were only corrupted by the evils of society. He gradually lived an ever simpler life, becoming closer and closer to nature, studying botany, and enjoying the solitary walks he recounted in his ten, classic meditations Reveries Of The Solitary Walker.

Walking, art and nature - these three things are so bound up in Rousseau, and, since his time, have been inextricably linked.  



Camino, Spain

Walking, art and nature. We think of Thoreau's ecstasies in Walden and in his Journals; the mystical outpourings of Richard Jefferies in The Story Of My Heart; William Wordsworth's 'emotion recollected in tranquillity'; the labourer-poet John Clare's walks among the dispossessed pastures of English agricultural history; Gary Syder's Beat and Buddhist mountain treks; Richard Mabey's gentle, literary eco-strolls through the Chilterns and Norfolk; Robert Macfarlane's explorations on foot of Britain's wild places; John Constable walking and painting in Dedham Vale; JMW Turner walking and painting in Europe.    



Camino, Spain

As well as walking in nature being an inspiration for art and literature, walking itself can be an art form in its own right. Richard Long, whom I've written about before, gives walking a totemic resonance through natural artworks created on the walk, or even through the signature of the actual walk itself: its mark, footprint and track across the landscape.

 

Camino, Spain

Sadly (for me at least!) I've reached the end of my ten-part journey through walking country. I hope some of it has been inspirational, or at least informative. Most of all I hope that's it's motivated you to go walking, or, if you're walkers already (which I know many of you are), to go walking even more. It's a land without class, without prejudice, without materialism, without competition, without complication, without compromise, without celebrity culture, without bonds. Rousseau famously wrote at the beginning of The Social Contract: Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains. Why don't you throw off those chains, and start walking?



Caparra, Via de la Plata, Spain



Here's the Roman arch at Caparra in the Spanish region of Extremadura. I walked under it nearly a year ago on my pilgrimage along the Via de la Plata. Why don't you join me as I step beneath it again, right now? Let's walk together towards those distant hills, that blue horizon. You never know what we might find... 

Caparra, Via de la Plata, Spain

Walking Pilgrimages (9)

Santiago Cathedral

The idea of pilgrimage is much older than Christianity, but always it has been an expression of the same two main concepts: that of making a pilgrimage by travelling to a specific geographical site, and that of being on a perpetual pilgrimage; the journey that is life itself. Both are the pursuit of a greater good than mere existence, and both involve discomfort and hardship, if not a much overworked word, peril. To view life as a pilgrimage is, in part, a description of life as a result of living it... MARGARET PAWLEY Prayers For Pilgrims



Camino,Spain

I'm just the latest in a very long tradition of pilgrims, to Rome and many other places, for any of a dozen reasons. My own reason for pilgrimage was gratitude for a favour granted. Those who went before me have all had reasons of their own. We've taken to the road with causes, and results, as varied as our routes. DENNIS LARKIN A Walk To Rome



Camino,Spain



Pilgrimage, the journey to a distant sacred goal, is found in all the great religions of the world. It is a journey both outwards, to new, strange, dangerous places, and inwards, to spiritual improvement, whether through increased self-knowledge or through the braving of physical dangers. RICHARD BARBER Pilgrimages

Camino, Spain

In Richard Barber's book Pilgrimages he describes many different pilgrimage traditions throughout the world: Jewish, Christian and Moslem pilgrimages to Jerusalem; the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca; Christian routes to Canterbury and Rome, to Santiago de Compostela in north-west Spain, to Fatima in Portugal, to Lourdes in France, and to many other European shrines; the Hindu pilgrimage to Benares in India; and Buddhist pilgrimages to shrines and stupas in India, China and Tibet. (The Buddha's ashes are distributed among eight different stupas, or dome-shaped cairns, in India.)

Camino, Spain



I myself have trekked three pilgrimage routes: one from Le Puy in France to Santiago in Spain; one from Arles in France to Puente la Reina in Spain; and one from Seville along the Via de la Plata to La Gudina, just short of Santiago. That's a total distance of more than 2000 miles. (Links to these walks are in my sidebar.)

Camino, Spain



Walking As A Cultural And Aesthetic Act (8)

Camino, Spain

Nowadays we take it for granted that walking is a laudable pastime and recreational activity. We tend to give a positive nod to the walkers we see: they are taking exercise, they are getting out in the fresh air, they are enjoying being part of nature. All Good Things. It was not always thus.

Up until the late eighteenth century no one walked unless they could help it, unless they were poor and could not afford horse, carriage or coach. And, for the ubiquitous poor, walking was not always a pleasurable pursuit. It was a means to an end, not an end in itself - the practical, indeed the only way to drive cattle and pigs to market, to reach crops grown on feudal agricultural strips, to visit friends and family. Beyond the village, routes were uncertain, if not dangerous. Highwaymen and footpads roamed the highways and byways, and folk in other settlements could be suspicious of, or downright hostile to, strangers. Even as late as 1782 the German minister Carl Moritz, walking across England, found himself abused by innkeepers, and ejected from hostelries where he wished to spend the night. His crime? He was on foot! He wrote: A traveller on foot in this country seems to be considered as a sort of wild man, or an out-of-the-way being, who is stared at, pitied, suspected, and shunned by everybody that meets him.

But, by the early nineteenth century, all of this had changed. Influenced by the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who originated the idea of the 'noble savage' living free and uncorrupted in the wild, poets and writers like William Wordsworth and Henry David Thoreau wholeheartedly embraced the cultural, aesthetic and moral value of nature. And, to get close to nature, you had to walk through it. Thoreau's two-year sojourn in a hut by Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts, is well known. He wrote: When we walk, we naturally go to the fields and the woods: what would become of us, if we walked only in a garden or a mall?

And Wordsworth - often accompanied by his sister, Dorothy, or fellow Romantics like Coleridge or De Quincey - must have walked tens of thousands of miles during his lifetime. He would regularly cover fifteen or twenty miles a day, and, even when at home in his Lakeland cottage, would stride endlessly up and down the garden in a creative reverie. Walking in nature gave him solace and inspiration, and he would commonly compose his poems while walking, rather than at his desk. To return to Thoreau, Thoreau also wrote: When a traveler asked Wordsworth's servant to show him her master's study, she answered, 'Here is his library, but his study is out of doors.' Wordsworth's masterpiece of a poem, The Prelude, is really just a long walk in words. 

Throughout the nineteenth century, this walking lark really caught on. Tourism was invented - helped by the boom of the railways - and people travelled further, and walked further, to admire and be awestruck at picturesque views, raging cataracts and terrifying mountain scenery. Hikers and climbers started to explore the European Alps and other mountain chains. Souvenirs were manufactured, and cameras began to record it all. The activity of walking also began to appear in the literature of the day. If you read Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice or Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles, you'll find they are full of people walking.

The Zen Of Walking (7)



Camino, Spain



Emptiness is the track on which the centred person moves. TSONG KHAPA

The self may not be something, but neither is it nothing. STEPHEN BATCHELOR Buddhism Without Beliefs

Now forget the schema of yesterday's post, forget the framework and the grand design, forget the concept of the path as riddle, metaphor, labyrinth, truth. Forget the arguments, the reasoning, the justifications, the mental constructs of personality, belief, philosophy. Forget it all. For these are mind-illusions, every one.

It's early morning on the Spanish Camino. There's a smell of fresh coffee wafting from the albergue's kitchen and the sound of pilgrims stirring. There's a CD gently playing - opera, I think, Verdi or Puccini - and the trickle of showers and the murmuration of a dozen different languages being spoken. Bring your body, bring your mind fresh to the table, a tabula rasa, fresh from sleep, cleansed of plaguing negative thoughts and emotions. Accept what is, embrace the here and now: the flies buzzing, the hungover hospitalero, the friendly Dutch girl, the serious German, the shy Norwegian, the voluble Italian, the awful coffee, the cheap biscuits. This is it. This is all there ever is. The here and now.

Forget the journey. And the destination. Forget yourself. (What is yourself, anyway?) Forget all those crippling, uncontrollable thoughts and emotions which arise, unbidden, and flood your mind for most of the time. Actually - don't forget them. But watch them come and go, observe them rise into your consciousness,  then subside. Study them with a certain casualness, detachment, even humour. Are they really so important after all? All those regrets, longings, disappointments, loves and hates, feelings of anger and resentment, ambitions, perceptions of failure, grand designs? They come and they go, like dandelion seed in the wind, like driftwood on the river.

The fact is that our real, our most profound journey of discovery - of the world and of the self - is not a real journey at all, as we normally understand the term, involving movement and direction. It's a journey into immediacy and nearness, into the here and now. To make this journey is not actually so difficult, but we need to realise three things, as Steve Hagen says in his book Buddhism Plain And Simple: First, you must truly realize that life is fleeting. Next you must understand that you are already complete, worthy, whole. Finally, you must see that you are your own refuge, your own sanctuary, your own salvation.

The journey starts and ends in us. We may not yet know it, but we have already arrived at our destination. We are already enlightened, if we could only unblock our vision. Santiago, Rome, Jerusalem, Chimayo, Mecca, Uluru. These are just pegs upon which to hang our walk, our pilgrimage; to give us some intellectual and emotional satisfaction, some idea of achievement, some physical, tangible goal, some credence for our mythical walking stories. The real destination is the here and now. Now, now and now. Always now. Right here. And right now.

The Spiritual Nature Of Walking (6)

Camino, Spain



The dictionary defines 'spiritual' (which comes from the Latin 'spiritus', meaning 'breath') as relating to, consisting of or having the nature of spirit; not tangible or material; concerned with or affecting the soul; of, from or relating to God; of or belonging to a church or religion; sacred; supernatural.

I think some of us may be slightly hestitant in using with confidence the words 'spiritual' and 'sacred' these days, loaded as they are with theological, specifically Judaeo-Christian meanings. But I say it's time to liberate these words. Indeed, this process of liberation and democratisation has been happening for quite a while. As more and more new-age cults and philosophies take hold, as we rediscover ancient beliefs and practices such as druidism or paganism, as we broaden our interest in and understanding of many different world religions, the idea of what is spiritual and sacred has widened and become more universal.

For instance, the belief in the sacred, spiritual aspects of nature - with the implication that nature should therefore be respected and protected - is widespread (think of Native American culture, wilderness writing, TV wildlife documentaries, political eco-warriors). Unfortunately, though these ideas are now more mainstream, there's still an enormous, seemingly impossible mountain to climb when faced with the power and vested interests of multi-national companies, corrupt governments, greedy, uncontrolled capitalism, and all the rest. But I digress.

For me the greatest rewards of walking are its spiritual ones. Sure, walking can tone and toughen the body, soothe the mind, calm our neuroses, reduce our stress levels, provoke our sense of curiosity and wonder. But without a greater framework - you can call it a symbolic, metaphorical, metaphysical, artistic, imaginative, religious or spiritual one, I don't think it matters - a long walk may simply be just that: a long walk. It seems to be a human need and necessity to impart some kind of personal myth or 'guiding fiction' to our lives (read Loren Webster's excellent post on this here), and a long walk is an ideal method of doing this.

We can layer our walk with a myriad of meanings and significances. When recounting our walk-story to others we may raise it to the level of a myth or a fable. Funny how we exaggerate some bits but leave out other bits, isn't it? (It's interesting to ponder on what parts we include, what parts we discount, what parts we embellish, and why we do this.) Perhaps we interpret our walk as a quest, a pilgrimage, a labyrinth, a metaphorical path bristling with symbols, a trip through Dante's 'dark wood', soul-wanderings, or Stations of the Cross. Whatever our interpretations, it's a fact that both our inner and outer journeys tend to become entwined, and feed into and enrich one other.

I'm afraid I just can't contemplate a long walk, which may take up a great deal of my time and energy, as simply a way of getting from A to Z during the course of which I might admire some views, suffer muscle fatigue, chat with a few people and drink rather too much wine. Oh no, it has to be some grand design for me! I'm made that way. My mind won't accept it's no more than a long, dusty trail. It flies off continually at all kinds of imaginative tangents, making all sorts of crazy and fantastic connections.

For walking will not allow us to be mere walkers; the vital breath (the 'spiritus', or the Sanskrit 'pranha', or the Chinese 'qi') of nature, the land and the landscape  - invisible, intangible, life-giving, all-important - fills our lungs and our hearts, and in doing so restores our inner being, which is also our spiritual being and our sacred ground.

Walking: Curiosity And Discovery (5)

Camino, Spain

The most soulful places are almost always reached only on foot. THE SOLITARY WALKER

I've written about the health benefits of walking, both physical and mental; about walking as an escape hatch from the demands of society and a fast-paced world; about the therapeutic value of walking; about walking as an aid to meditation; about how the simplicity of walking strips everything down to life's bare and necessary essentials. But what actually is the basic, primal driving force behind our desire to put one foot in front of the other, endlessly?

I believe it's curiosity. As human beings we are naturally curious. I know I am. I always want to know what's around the next bend, what's at the top of the hill, what lies beyond the horizon. Or even just what's at the end of the garden. Without any excited sense of expectancy, of insatiable curiosity, walking would be in danger of becoming a mere treadmill. Curiosity keeps our minds sharp, our senses finely tuned; keeps us alive.

It's limitless what is waiting to be discovered, explored and learnt through walking. And walking - in its immediacy and simplicity, its freedom and flexibility - is, I'm convinced, the best way to grasp the world. Not only can walking take you to places most other methods of transport can't reach, but it gives you an inimitably physical, visceral, hands-on experience of the journey. Whenever I'm on a long walk, my senses gradually become more alert as each day goes by. As I slowly lose the built-up fumes of contemporary industrialised, mechanised, homogenised 'civilisation', my mind begins to see more clearly, I can breathe more easily, I rediscover senses - smell, taste, touch - which have been long muted, I rejoice in the freedom of what I'm doing, I melt into the unique presence of each moment, I'm glad to be alive. As Whitman wrote: I celebrate myself and I sing the body electric. And as Thoreau said: Talk of mysteries! — Think of our life in nature, — daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it, — rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! The solid earth! the actual world! the common sense! Contact! Contact!

Walking day after day in a new country is a wonderful way to appreciate it, to get to grips with it, to comprehend it in a profound way. I know from my own experience that I feel I 'know' England and France and Spain in a wholly different way by walking across them, by feeling their earth under my feet and their dirt under my fingernails, than by cruising through them in car, coach or train. In walking you go at Nature's pace, slow and deep. You encounter Nature one-to-one.The barriers between you and Nature, between you and other people, are down. Your feet are planted right there, in the puddles and the mud, on the piney forest floor, on the springy downland turf, in the sand at the edge of the sea. It's instinctive, it's primitive, and it somehow feels just right.

The Simplicity Of Walking (4)

Camino, Spain

Many years ago, a friend made me a begging bowl like the ones used by the Buddhist monks. I keep it on my desk, where it can be seen daily, because it reminds me of several principles that I want to guide my life. First, it reminds me of Lao Tzu's paradoxical advice that we must be empty if we wish to be full. Second, it reminds me that my needs, versus my desires, are no greater than what can be placed in a small bowl each day — a little food and a little water. Finally, and most importantly, it reminds me of the need to anchor my life in simplicity — simplicity of purpose, simplicity of thought, simplicity of action. From GEORGE's blog Transit Notes

Our life is frittered away by detail ... Simplify, simplify. THOREAU

Simplicity of purpose, simplicity of thought, simplicity of action. Where better to find this guiding trinity exemplified than in the simple act of walking, especially long distance walking? Here are a few thoughts on walking's pared-down simplicities.

Simplicity of locomotion: What means of transport is simpler, more economical, more eco-friendly and more liberating than one's own two feet? Even both horse and bicycle - my next preferred modes of travel - are more restrictive, and have maintainance costs involved. But if you walk you are totally free. You can go more or less where you want. If you look after your feet, they'll take you 80,000 miles over 80 years with a little luck. They don't need feeding, oiling, refuelling, waxing and polishing every Sunday, or heaps of hard-earned cash poured into them. Just a little basic care and consideration, and the right footwear (girls, beware those high heels!), and they should give you a lifetime's service - each step a sensual pleasure. Try going barefoot too - the ultimate in freedom.

Simplicity of clothing: Sure, you can spend a fortune on walking gear - technical trousers, wicking underwear, state-of-the-art backpacks and all the rest. Equally, with a little astuteness and imagination, you can spend relatively little. Good quality hiking kit can last a very long time. I've had some of mine for years and years. The secret is to narrow down what you really need and will really use from the outset. I know from experience it's temptingly easy to waste money buying the wrong kind of stuff. Comfort's the prime consideration here: expensive pairs of all-singing-all-dancing walking boots are just scrap if they're not serviceable and comfortable. And the same goes for all other items of apparel, to a greater or lesser extent. But you don't have to sacrifice stylishness: gear these days looks good and is fashionable too. Two golden rules: firstly, footwear's the most important item for the long distance walker. If your feet are unhappy, then you are unhappy. Invest in walking boots carefully and wisely. Secondly, wear relatively thin, technical multi-layers of clothing. This is comfortable and practical. You can strip layers off and put them on according to the weather and the temperature. (Clothing that's too thick and bulky is uncomfortable over a long period of time and impedes flexibility - as well as adding unnecessary weight to your pack.) My own personal favourite items of clothing? Body-hugging Merino wool base layers (long-sleeved top, long pants). I wouldn't be without them in cold weather. In fact I'm wearing them now! And, top tip: you can wear them for days without even a trace of body odour!

Simplicity of food: Food and drink are the very soul of a long hike or pilgrimage. Anyone who tells you differently is lying. Without the pleasure and sustenance of food and drink, all the other untold benefits of walking - opportunities for exercise, reflection, meditation, therapy, spiritual growth - would wither on the vine. When walking long distances day after day you get very hungry and very thirsty. But what's great is that, however much you eat (within reason), you lose weight rather than gain weight, as you're burning calories like mad because of the physical exertion. Also, you lose weight because there are far fewer temptations and opportunities to eat. You're often in the middle of nowhere, miles from shops, towns, even villages. So your packed lunch becomes incredibly important - what you've packed, when and where to eat it, and so on. I must honestly say that some of the best, tastiest and most satisfying meals of my life have been simple al fresco lunches - perhaps of bread, cheese and olives - eaten on a flat rock in a stunning mountain landscape, or on a wild headland jutting out into a blue sea, or in a grassy hollow surrounded by woods full of barking deer.

Simplicity of shelter: On long treks and Camino pilgrimages accommodation is often simple and spartan - but it's cheap, and it usually offers hot showers, a bunk bed and a warm reception. What more could you want or need? Sharing food and stories and experiences with fellow walkers and pilgrims is physical and spiritual sustenance enough at the end of the day. Of course, like anyone I like my posh hotels from time to time. But they can be so, so lonely...

Simplicity of friendship: While walking alone and for long distances through countries and amazing landscapes, fleeting friendships are often struck and abandoned. Or they may be continued. I like to call these micro-friendships. But often there is nothing micro about them. They may be enormously significant and profound, despite the short period of time. We all know the importance of brief but deep conversational rapports we've had, say, with strangers on a train. Barriers come down, the usual polite, camouflaging niceties dissolve, and we make contact with the real, raw, uninhibited person and fellow traveller.

Simplicity of thought: Yes, I've had profound, spiritual epiphanies on my long walks. I've written poems. I've felt an almost mystical identification with Nature from time to time. But in fact, most of the time, one's thoughts are stripped down to bare essentials. How long till I can eat? How many hours of daylight are left? Have I read the map correctly? Does that black cloud mean the weather's about to turn? These primal, primitive, essentially life-preserving instincts cleanse and simplify the anxiety-driven mind. What use the metaphysical torments of the ravaged soul, the restless spirit or the ever-demanding intellect if we are lost, cold or hungry? Such simplification of thought is - actually - a purging experience, and clears the mind of its crippling, life-long baggage in a quite wonderful way.

Walking As Meditation (3)

Camino, Spain

To meditate does not mean to fight with a problem.
To meditate means to observe.
Your smile proves it.
It proves that you are being gentle with yourself,
that the sun of awareness is shining in you,
that you have control of your situation.
You are yourself,
and you have acquired some peace.

THICH NHAT HAHN

This is a vast, fascinating and important subject, and I fear I'll only have space for a few hints and glimpses in this post. But if these brief thoughts and jottings encourage anyone to read and explore further, I will be happy.

There's a rich history of walking as an aid to reflection, meditation and spiritual self-discovery. Those great walker-writers of the English Romantic movement who found in Nature such a source of creative inspiration - Wordsworth, Coleridge, Hazlitt, De Quincey et al. - I'll consider in another post. Here I want to concentrate on the religious and ritual aspects of walking.

Two main religions come to mind when we think of walking as meditation: Western Christianity, and Eastern Buddhism (though Buddhism is not, strictly speaking, a religion - rather a set of ethics or a philosophy of life.) Christianity has a long tradition of pilgrimage walking - to Canterbury, to Rome, to Jerusalem, to Santiago de Compostela, to a host of other sacred sites. Such peregrinations are undertaken for a number of reasons: to perform a penance, to give thanks to God, to petition for a cure, to fulfill a vow, to meditate on and reaffirm faith. A pilgrim route also has a symbolic significance as it represents the journey of the soul through the vicissitudes of mortal life to heaven. The popularity of pilgrimage has waxed and waned over the centuries. At the moment its appeal is growing, as more and more people seek  an alternative, spiritual, non-materialistic mode of life.

The blog Pilgrimpace expressed a personal view of pilgrimage, and the relationship between walking and prayer, in a post of just over a year ago called The Walking Becomes The Praying:

'A pilgrimage gets to the holy place at last but what gives it its part in prayer is the slamming down of ones feet to complete the journey praying the while for all its features.'  ALAN ECCLESTONE

A book that I come back to again and again is A Staircase for Silence by Alan Ecclestone. Ecclestone, a Communist Anglo-Catholic, was for many years Vicar of Darnall in Sheffield and is, for me, one of the most important figures of the twentieth century. A Staircase for Silence is a study of Charles Peguy, the French poet and visionary.

While I walked through Spain I tried to pray. I also reflected and reflect now on the deep connection between prayer and walking. The praying took many forms. Sometimes I prayed formal intercessions for people or situations. Sometimes I sang. Sometimes a breathing prayer such as the Jesus Prayer. But most of all the walking became the praying. The slamming down of the feet, the being at one with myself, landscape and God, tiredness, the mind shutting up and stilling. Walking, pilgrimage itself, became prayer. It felt very real, linking deeply into the rest of my life in all its aspects, and into the Office and Holy Communion. Ecclestone describes Peguy 'treading out in the countryside with the joyfulness of a lover, the delight of an artist, the ecstasy of one who worships.' The Camino was all those for me, but it was also hard and penitential (bloodily so – literally on one occasion, when I witnessed an ill-prepared Spanish peregrino remove his boots outside the bar at Albergueria).

Although Buddhism does not use the idea of prayer as part of its own meditative process, there are affinities, I believe, between Christian walking prayer and Buddhist walking meditation. Both address our inner spiritual needs, our mental and soul conflicts, our human struggle with this world of transience and illusion, in the pursuit of peace, understanding and enlightenment. Whether we're addressing a God or some unnameable not-self doesn't really matter, it seems to me. There may be different points of entry, but they all lead to the same 'interior castle'.

Walking meditation is widely practised in Zen Buddhism (it's known as kinhin, as opposed to zazen, which is sitting meditation). The mindfulness and meditation teacher Jon Kabat-Zinn has written much about this, and I myself mentioned one particular technique here.) The Buddhist monk, poet and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh wrote this poem, offering some of the mental images he uses for walking meditation:

Breathing in, I know I am breathing in.
Breathing out, I know I am breathing out.
In/Out.

Breathing in, I see myself as a flower.
Breathing out I feel fresh.
Flower/Fresh.

Breathing in, I see myself as a mountain.
Breathing out, I feel solid.
Mountain/Solid.

Breathing in, I see myself as still water.
Breathing out, I reflect things as they are.
Water/Reflecting.

Breathing in, I see myself as space.
Breathing out, I feel free.
Space/Free.

There's a tradition of itinerant mendicant monks all over the Far East. Shramanas were wandering monks in ancient India who renounced the world and lived ascetic lives of austerity in order to attain spiritual development and liberation. Komuso were Japanese mendicant monastics who wore straw baskets over their heads - to demonstrate the absence of ego - and who played bamboo flutes for alms in a practice aimed at gaining enlightenment and healing. And of course Gautama Buddha himself walked far and wide thoughout his life, first as a seeker, then as a teacher.

I've found Buddhist mindfulness and meditation techniques incredibly beneficial on my own pilgrimage treks across France and Spain. They really do work in calming the mind, making you more alert to each passing second, giving you a super-consciousness of the landscape you're passing through, and renewing your energy for the miles ahead.