Walking Is Like Breathing

I've considered the long Summer Rambles along town-to-town rural roadways of north-central Florida that my wife and I enjoy. The essence of these extended day-long journeys can be seen as a dichotomy between movement and rest. So consider this movement-rest dichotomy, from the general to the specific.

• The Earth: The surface of the earth is not flat. It moves. It breathes. It heaves and falls, and it rests. For the most part, our rural walking paths follow a varied surface dictated historically by historic landforms.


• The Road: The roads we walk are never linear because they follow the land's undulating surface. The way rises and falls like gentle unhurried breathing. The road curves this way and that as it follows the contours of the land and the patchwork of farms and section lines. On straight level stretches the road rests; on the curves and dips the road moves. It moves and breathes with the earth except in those places where Arrogant Man has bent it to his purpose and forced the road to unaturally lie where it wouldn't otherwise.


• Walking: We begin our walk from a state of rest and about 10 miles later end the walk and rest again. Walking, we stride with purpose through the sunny stretches and linger in the shade. We stop to contemplate a lovely tree, or a sandhill crane in a pasture, or the blush of new growth painting the outer branches of an oak hammock. Then we start again. We stop to drink and stretch, exchange a touch, a kiss, then start walking anew. Movement and Rest. We fall into the rhythms of the land and those of our own bodies.


• Conversation: Speaking repeatedly begins, swells, then ebbs into silence. Within each utterance, each spoken syllable is either a consonant that stops sound, or a vowel that sustains a sound. Our speech is a stream of vowel sounds (literally the movement of our vocal cords) broken by the rhythm of consonantal silences (the voice apparatus at rest), with longer or shorter pauses between utterances.


• Breathing: Inhale-Exhale. Each breath fills our lungs with the smells of Summer, of hay and horses, of swamps and pinelands. Breathing out is relaxation that expels care, worry, and stress. A slight pause, then it starts again. Inhalation is movement. Exhalation and the pause that follows is rest. Movement and rest. These are worthwhile things to contemplate.
  

Our lives, second to second, minute to minute, day to day, year to year, from beginning to end, are a symphony of rhythms. What we do within these nested intervals is how we live our lives. We select the notes, and can choose where pauses will occur and we may orchestrate the movements and rests. We are free, even, to chose the ensemble of players that help us play out our lives' rhythms and music. Unhappiness is the result of either exerting too much control on the rhythms and movements, or conversely, not guiding and orchestrating the rhythms of our lives just enough to achieve or maintain a balance. The ideal: The Happy Medium. The Golden Mean. Restraint. Moderation. Just Enough. Not Too Much.

I believe Humankind's biggest Sin and Error is to dishonor the natural rhythms of the Earth and Nature, and of our human-ness, and to alter them for its unnatural and greedy desires. The history of modern/western industrialism is a record of Man's imposition of dissonance and disharmony everywhere he goes. In the present moment we commonly find ourselves walking far out of step with everything, including our own heartbeats. Is it any wonder that there is unrest and despair in the world?
philosophy, walking, hiking, treking, backpacking, Florida, western industrialism, progress, history, world