I spent half a sleepless night reading the long-distance walking accounts of Chris Willett. There is a lot of reading, but through so much of it I felt as if I were walking with him, on much the same kinds of walks that I enjoy doing. His account of walking the Great Divide Trail especially moved me, because the experience came across as so similar to my own solo bicycle ride from Denmark to Paris in 1988. While writing my book about the experience (I’m still looking for a publisher… Anyone interested in giving it a read?) I had to face the constant memories of how much time I spent alone, and how meeting other souls along the way made all the difference in the story line of the journey.
Last year I had planned to go to Australia to walk the Larapinta Trail, but circumstances left my wallet as dry as the Outback. Reading Chris Willett, though, the fire is stoked again and I hope that this year I can actually make it out of my front door. I’ll shoot for September for a nice long walk in the desert. And with eight months to get in training I should be in top shape for even the hardest parts of the walk.
One day soon I want to try another long journey like the six-month bicycle trip my wife and I took in 1995. For anyone who has never spent such a long single stretch of time out of doors, camping each day, moving at your own pace, and feeling your body harden in ways you never knew you could, it is hard to describe the sheer immediacy and match that the human body and mind finds when living close to its original state. We were meant to live outdoors. W were meant to spend most of our time without a roof over our head or walls to block out our peripheral vision. We were meant to live with the roll of the sun and stars, the passage of clouds, and the motion capture reality of flowers and trees growing. And you can’t know it by reading a book or walking in an artificial park. You can’t really know the full presence of the earth until you actually feel yourself crawling across its surface, your muscles growing in proportion to the pull of gravity and distance.
Ever since I can remember journeying and getting outdoors into all the mess has been like a ache of joy that I had to follow. Sitting everyday at my computer now, pacing back and forth in the generic streets of Tokyo (and earlier, Boston) it is as if I am denying myself my own predisposition. Maybe other people don’t find walking alone in the mountains in a pouring rain all that exhilarating, but for me it is life itself. I am never more in my element than when walking in the woods or on a ridge or along a seashore wrack-line. If only there was a way to make it permanent, and still have my family and friends and livelihood.
I go snowshoeing tomorrow. I hear the snow in the Nikko area north of Tokyo reaches up to your hips. And more on its way tonight. It ought to be a blast!
Laughing Knees 