Recently, I took a walk of almost two- hundred miles across the landscape of spring on the Camino de Santiago in Spain.
The vegetation and the emerging leaves on the canopy above me offered a dense background with many markers for the progress of the season as well as for my own progress along the path – on which I averaged about seven to nine miles in a day.
My leisurely pace filled the time almost completely with floral events, with hills of bright wheat and woods of eucalyptus and pine, combining them and also blurring them until my physical exertion and the habitat around me no longer felt significantly different or separated.
Space slipped by more easily the more I walked and my body became used to movement, The correlation between landscape and mind grew tighter. The world was no longer kept me away from me by machines or walls. I became a figment of the surrounding roads and woods.
Upon my return, I ask myself what lessons do I bring with me to my traditional ex-urban life. I will not be walking hundreds of miles for a while. Now what? For the moment, it may be enough to know that there are more dimensions in place and time than I had suspected, and that if I moved the right way long enough, I might glimpse their boundaries.
This is Bill Felker with Poor Will’s Almanack. I'll be back again next week with note for the second week of early summer. In the meantime, think about how the more slowly you move through space, the the greater influence that space may have on you. Experiment a little.
