Walking

Augustine is credited with the expression “Solvitur ambulando” – – “It is solved by walking”. Whenever I hear that I think, “I wonder – – what is solved?” Perhaps you only find out by trying.

Our chief reason for hiking is to “walk off” our attachment to words. We’re there to let the mind empty itself, usually after a long period of overuse. We follow our body instead, as it focuses on the demands of the trail. Our walk … it is in part a symbolic acting out of an inner journey (seeing something in the physical that mirrors the spiritual).

Jesus was a pedestrian … in the Bible, it’s less common to find him preaching in the Temple than it is walking.

He walked out into the desert to be tempted.

As he walked by the Sea of Galilee he saw two brothers, “Come and follow me,” he said.

He even walked on water.

It was while he was walking along a road that a man said, “I will follow you wherever you go …”

Jesus walked out of the city, up to Golgotha, stumbling, all the Way to His death (for love).

And He walked back into life again, with those two disciples on the road to Emmaus.

The apostle John wrote – “Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus walked.” (1 John 2:6).

Wendell Berry says this – “Always in the big woods when you leave familiar ground and step into a new place there will be … a little nagging of dread. It is the ancient fear of the Unknown, and it is your first bond with the wilderness you are going into. What you are doing is exploring. You are undertaking the first experience, not of the place, but of yourself in that place.”

John Muir said this: “Hiking – I don’t like either the word or the thing. People ought to saunter in the mountains, not hike! Do you know the origin of that word ‘saunter’? It’s a beautiful word. Back in the Middle Ages people used to go on pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and when people in the villages through which they passed asked where they were going, they would reply, ‘A la sainte terre’ – – ‘To the Holy Land.’ And so they became known as sainte-terre-ers or saunterers. Now these mountains are our Holy Land, and we ought to saunter through them reverently, not ‘hike’ through them.”

As you explore this special place, may you learn to saunter & wander with wonder.