Two Loop Walk #14: Important Business

Another warm (-5), cloudy day that sings to me of March. I crunch along the trail preoccupied with the introduction to my book which I was writing this morning.

I remember that these walks are an exercise in paying attention. I look at the little brown birch seeds scattered over the snow. Some of snow caps have blown off the posts. The blue park outhouse is silent and snowbound.

I retreat into thoughts about a story I want to publish on northern writers.

When I come to, I am further down the trail. Princess trots ahead with purpose, her tail curled high. She crisscrosses the trail sniffing, then peeing, then sniffing somewhere else. She acts like it’s important business and I think she ought to have a briefcase. I wonder what it’s like to see the world through your nose and never doubt the meaning of what you’re doing.

Two Loop Walk #13: Magic Light

We went walking with friends in town today on the steep paths of Tin Can Hill and out onto the ice of the Great Slave Lake. It was only minus 5 and the sun gave off a magical light that made me think of hope, optimism, warm slippers, good friends and everything that is wonderful about life. I have only ever seen that exact quality of light here in the North.

Bill and Mark walked ahead while Gabby and I followed. The two dogs, Lily and Princess ran back and forth and around in circles in unbridled enthusiasm at each other’s company.

Gabby and I talked about the soul. About how to understand what it is our souls want. And about how, then, to find the courage to let it do what it wants to do, even though it doesn’t care about money, prestige, what the world thinks or any of the other concerns that entangle us on a daily basis. About how frightening it all is.

Then the dogs raced around us again. We forgot our deep musings, laughed and just luxuriated in the magic of the light and the day. Probably what our souls wanted all along.

Two Loop Walk #12: Well-being

Well-being

The sky is dull grey, the air warm (-9C) and there is a brisk wind tormenting the birch trees. All the snow is off them now although a couple still cling to the crumpled brown leaves from last year. Today I am at ease. My mind is loose and ripples over the course of my life. I wonder how it is I have come to this moment in this place. Oh, I know the facts of how I got there, but the deeper story still eludes me. Yet the older I get, the more I sense there is a reason to it all, that everything fits together like a puzzle. That my being here in these moment in these woods somehow contributes to the well-being of everything else.


We must be careful for our lives because we are part of everything else and when we hurt, everything hurts with us.

Easy to hold everything in respect on a lazy Saturday when I have space in my day. Let’s see how I do when I am harried with work and sleeplessness.

Two Loop Walk #11: A tree is a tree

Cloudy: -15C

When I first decided that I would go on 365 walks and write something about each on them, I took great joy in the idea. The walks added space and shape to my day and I looked forward to them. Now it is only the 11th walk and it seems like a chore. It has deteriorated into just another of the many things I have to do in a day.

I have to accept that not all of my walks will actually be walks. Sometimes there will just be the idea of walking.

I originally thought of this as an exercise in seeing, in being in the moment. It seems to me that the whole world is contained in every part of it. If you look deeply at the same thing over and over, you will see it differently every time and this seeing has the power to transform your life.

Instead of learning how to see, I am learning how much I don’t want to see. I don’t want to be profoundly present in the moment. I look at a tree and I see just a tree, the same tree I saw yesterday. The image of the tree glazes over the surface of my consciousness and barely leaves a dent.

Only when you are in the present is it possible to connect to Spirit. Is all this busyness and distraction so that God won’t get me? I wonder the next 354 walks or non-walks will teach me.

(If all this seems like old hippie thinking, I have come by it honestly. I came of age then and did all the things the era is famous for. Okay, maybe I smoked too much dope in my younger days.)

Two Loop Walk # 10: Nothing sacred

It was -20. We were walking into the pink sunset when the clouds looked like cotton candy. I was imagining that I was Doctor Zhivago walking across Russia in the snow. Then Bill’s cell phone rang and he had a long conversation with somebody about our propane bill. Is nothing sacred anymore?

Two Loop Walk #9: Warmth

It’s one of those cold (-25), northern winter days when the sun is so bright it cuts your eyes. The snow has smoothed the edges of the rocks. They look like rolling hills, rolling through snow and shadow, snow and shadow, under trees and away.

Princess runs down the road and I yell at her to come back. She’s the kind of dog who thinks a command is a suggestion. She ignores me. All I can see is the curl of her tail, bouncing behind the snow bank of the side of the road. I use my serious COMMAND VOICE and she comes back leaping with happiness. I wish I could be that unapologetically joyful.

For the first time this year I feel the barest hint of warmth in the sun. There is the promise of spring under the snow.

Two Loop Walk #8: Excitement

Ohhhh, I’m so tired.

I am an excitement junkie and I was on an adrenalin binge about the work I’m doing and what I hope to do and what might happen. . . and so on, this morning. When it was time to go for my walk, I had crashed and just wanted to take a nap.

I went anyway. It’s warm for February, minus 20. We haven’t had snow in a while so the path is easier to walk now. The sky was grey with a hint or rosiness and just as I came back I could see a dim shadow in the sunlight.

Much more peaceful now. But, oh, it is hard to remember that excitement is just another form of fear – one that I like. When I step into that deep, abiding peace that is inseparable from joy, then I know that excitement is only ever a poor substitution.