Why I Walk
Spring on the trail, a mini-manifesto and this month's foragings.
March winds towards a close, spooling out longer days bound to still-bitter equal nights. This month’s ending offers you an open hand, fingers softly unfurling to reveal a palm crisscrossed with lines. You choose their meaning. Mis Mawrth, am Mà rt, mi Márta, mis Meurth, miz Meurzh: ‘March’ bares linguistic similarities across the Celtic languages of Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, Irish Gaelic, Cornish and Breton. All derive from the Latin root Martius, named after Mars, the god of war and agriculture. The Roman year historically started in March, which makes a lot more sense. In searching for inspiration from our fiery sibling planet, I discover that astrologically, Mars is the planet of energy, action, survival, and desire.
This month has seen me back onto longer trails after a winter of shorter walks and a lot of cake. More determined than last year, I am quick to slip into my wandering skin. Preparation is key; being flexible and ready to go. Two additions find their way into my walking bag; an excellent Opinel knife kindly brought for me from France, and a pair of cutters for those pesky moments of enforced barbed-wire hopping. These small trespasses are not chosen for fun, but brought on by avoiding livestock or bad footpath maintenance. After 18 months of research into Walking Arts, the act of an everyday walk can still indeed be simple. It can also be a lot more.
Whilst acknowledging that it is a privilege to be able to walk (physically, safely, somewhere appealing and with reasonable confidence), I would like to share that I don’t know who I am anymore without this walking practice. This is meant in the most expressive and positive of directions. From time to time I get asked why I walk, and it is so hard to answer that in a short-form manner. Almost always, I am happy to stick to the hills, although taking part in some urban walks of late (with Walkspace) has given me some new perspectives on why and how I walk.
Perhaps the vastness of motivations for (and benefits of) walking are best summed up in relationality. This week I bumped into a 93-year-old local on the canal path, possibly for the first time this year. He walks with a mobility aid and camera, taking wonderful portraits of people along the way. I don’t know this man well, but as fellow walkers we greet each other like old friends. In Shane O’Mara’s excellent book In Praise of Walking, the author points out that walking is one of the intrinsic things that makes us human, alongside modalities like hunter-gathering. Through neuroscience and anatomy, O’Mara reveals how walking helps learning, memory and cognition, slowing down (and even reversing) the functional ageing of the brain. Shane also highlights ‘divergent wandering’ as a key aspect of creative thinking, which is no surprise to all you fellow neurodiverse arty types out there. We don’t know where we’re going, but we know it is somewhere interesting! According to O’Mara, walking facilitates what he calls ‘active mind-wandering’. I think my often-overwhelmed, highly sensitive person prefers this to dopamine-fuelled scrolling and disappearing down rabbit holes. If March is about action, I invite you to boldly take a few (or more) new steps. For some inspiration, here is an evolving mini-manifesto of sorts:
I walk for grounding, for sanity, to find a sense of place, to locate myself within what poet Adrienne Rich speaks of as ‘a politics of location’. I walk to be in my body, to slow down time, to travel to wander/wonder. Walking fulfils the desire of a sometimes restless soul, the yearning to feel awe and to expand into wide open spaces whilst remembering we are really a very small part of all this. I walk in relationship; to places, the more-than-human, the world we live in, my occasional companions, myself. I walk to understand these things we call landscape and life. Walking is both act of creation in itself and a pilgrimage towards the written word, art, expression. I walk to enjoy and experience pleasure; that of my moving body, her power, grace and potential. My walking is meditation, essential processing time, sensory seeking and release; beautiful self-regulation in harmony with the present moment. I walk not just for myself. In a world which constantly tries to constrain us and keep the marginalised firmly in place, we walk for freedom.
March also brings the latest edition of online art and literary publication Wild Roof Journal, in which I have a poem. Editor Aaron Lelito also invited me to write the introductory note for this issue, which was a joyful new editorial experience. You can find issue 29 on the Wild Roof website or become a supporter here on Substack. Aaron will also feature as an upcoming guest on Desire Lines podcast.
On a podcast note, do check out the latest episode From Midlands to Margins, a conversation with artist Jamila Walker. A good few copies of Wayfindings have made their way into the world, and you can still pick up a physical or digital copy of this poetry pamphlet-zine in my Ko-Fi shop. I was also honoured to record an upcoming podcast episode with Jonathan Stalls of Intrinsic Paths and Pedestrian Dignity, look out for this one coming out in a couple of weeks’ time.
One For the Pot
In the last dispatch, I introduced One For the Pot. In these humble offerings I combine morsels of inspiration foraged from the month past. At this turning point into Spring, I bring you the soothing tones of Owen Sheers and his band Cynefin, for whom printmaker extraordinaire Molly Brown has recently created cover artwork for. I went to see them in Machynlleth’s Tabernacle, a beautiful venue with excellent sound. Book-wise, I have begun Richard Mabeys Weeds: How Vagabond Plants Gatecrashed Civilisation and Changed the Way We Think About Nature. At the same time, I am re-reading All About Love by bell hooks, because it is wonderful, and Spring is the time to pop a few fizzles of romance in our step. On a totally different topic (or is it…) a new neurodivergence podcast has come my way. If (like me) you embody both Autistic and ADHD qualities, you may enjoy AudHD Flourishing on Spotify. For a more literary listen, you can also find the Wild Roof podcast online, which accompanies the journal mentioned above.
Wishing you verdant hop-skips whilst following those Spring desire lines, until next time Friends :)