On Walking

If you are ready to leave father and mother, and brother and sister, and wife and child and friends, and never see them again,—if you have paid your debts, and made your will, and settled all your affairs, and are a free man; then you are ready for a walk. - Henry David Thoreau, Walking (1862)

Many story archetypes, such as the hero's journey, the pilgrimage, and the quest, are walking journeys. Walking is fundamental to what it means to be human. And not only because it is a way to get from place to place.

There are many beautiful and profound meditations on walking itself independent of its practical utility, which express aspects of why I am doing this better than I can. These include Walking by Henry David Thoreau, On Going a Journey by William Hazlitt, and Walking Tours by Robert Louis Stevenson.

A work in progress

When I get asked "why are you doing this?", I usually answer along the lines of "it's a spiritual journey", and mumble something about the Camino de Santiago.

While this is true, it is not really a good answer.

I am trying to work through what I mean by "a spiritual journey". While my own personal story might be interesting to hear about, there is something more important here – something about what minds are, and how they work, and what it means to have a life well lived.

When I have something ready, I'll link to it here.

In the interim, here is a quote from a blog post on the Quest for the Holy Grail, about what that story represents.

What I have found is the trace of an idea, a strand of belief in the infinite, a story of an endless quest for truth. The Grail, to borrow a word from the scientific community, is best understood as a meme, the cultural equivalent of a gene, an idea born at the beginning of human history, embedded so deeply within our consciousness that we are scarcely aware of it, though it remains very much alive in us today. This Grail is ... an idea carried by history itself, and by some of our greatest works of literature... Above all, it is a dream that all may follow, a lifelong journey that winds itself in and around our daily lives like a golden thread. - John Matthews, Sir Thomas Malory's Quest for the Grail (2024)