by Julie Neraas
I joined a jogging club as a teenager and logged hundreds of miles along the country roads surrounding my parents’ home in Washington State. Still today I walk alone or with a friend around the lakes in our city in the late afternoon. Something about moving physically outside has restorative power.
This small sanctuary in the day when I walk is more about restoring my soul than exercise. It is a lifeline. I recognize a pattern in what happens inside me.
First, the act of walking engages my body and frees my mind to pour out its contents. Thoughts and feelings come spilling forth like a geyser, swimming up to the surface of consciousness, sometimes surprising me. I find I feel sad. Or I bump into anger and wonder, what is this about? There are other emotions, too: joy, grief, gratitude, bewilderment, and thoughts to match.
I see how fixated I am on a problem — an assignment, a grade. Why did I get a B+? I watch my mind and am shocked by how busy it is, dashing here and there, making judgments, solving problems, reacting as if everything were an emergency. The first mile or more of walking is, for me, about clearing out.
By the second mile, after my mind and emotions have enough air time, the natural world begins to work its wonders. There is room in me for seeing, hearing, smelling, savoring, appreciating. I notice what I have flown by for days — a canopy of elms and tall cottonwoods that stand like benevolent sentinels, watching over our neighborhood; the enduring willow trees that hug the lakeshore banks with their large, underground roots. Things shift inside me. Surrounded by the wide-open sky, my small self is taken up by something larger. Things shake out. All the energy that has been spent on achieving gives way to beholding.
Adapted from Apprenticed to Hope by Julie Neraas copyright © 2009 Augsburg Books admin Augsburg Fortress. Reproduced by permission. All rights reserved.