The Great Escape

Steve McQueen doesn't live here. Then again, neither do I. But it's my great escape. My head-heart-soul are kicked back with coffee, firewood, a notebook and pen, and Jorie Graham's "Place," even if my body hasn't figured out how to join them yet.

I'm generally lit up by the Christmas spirit, but this year, I've felt more like escaping. Wind, rain and sleet the day after were a treat for words, ideas and naps. And for building Legos if you
live in our house and attend elementary school.

My mind drifts between snow, cabins, frozen ponds and polar icebreakers. There's wanderlust in my legs to get out, to go somewhere. But Lyme Disease landed this year and has limited my time on foot and has me wondering how to cope, how to get back, how to get "it" back. I don't know my body and what it's capable of the way I have known it. What I'm left with is restless leg syndrome of the mind.

My mind seeks both stillness and adventure. I have a sense that both body and mind need to stretch to activate the soul.

The cold is setting in. I get the hibernating animals: I want to do the same, but not sleep, but go inward. I'm some place between, like a waiting room (cue the Fugazi song). Except for that song, I hate waiting rooms.

I want to simplify, Thoreau style; I want to meditate like Thomas Merton. I'm affected by the spaces around me, which is part of the reason for wanting to escape.

I want to tie disparate threads together--Jorie Graham, Merton and Gaston Bachelard's "Poetics of Space," with the backdrop of a winter cabin as the existential shoelaces to lace up the trail shoes.

Aahh, it's the work.

* Photo from Cabin Porn, my new favorite Tumblr site.

Making strides

I remember the walking more than what we saw or talked about. Winter of 95-96 in Oxford, the town was snowed in and Colin was snowed in with us at our apartment.

It was dark, maybe 10pm or later when we set out on a walk to explore the town and the snow. We talked and walked through a good bit of the night, undeterred, actually excited by the weather. I don't remember what time we got back.

One of those walks, those experiences, that sticks with you. I've had a few of them.

Sometimes I think I'm a runner because I'm an impatient walker. A group of us will cover our 10-mile Tuckahoe trail run or a run around town of the same distance in under 90 minutes--covering ground, heart pumping, endorphins cranking, body feeling good. But you aren't really seeing things the same as when you set out on a meander.

Walking itself is the intentional act closest to the unwilled rhythms of the body, to breathing and the beating of the heart. It strikes a delicate balance between working and idling, being and doing. It is a bodily labor that produces nothing but thoughts, experiences, arrivals. -Rebecca Solnit

Last week I sent some running quotes to a group of co-workers training for their first half-marathon. I stumbled across this gem from Thoreau, "Methinks that the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow." I've thought and lived and written about this same thing (though less eloquently) for some time. My mind works better in motion.

I'm reading Rebecca Solnit's Wanderlust: A History of Walking and it's hard to sit still. It reframes my mind and body and place/relation in the world and makes me want to walk.

My favorite runs have the same quality as a walk--unscripted, unmapped, done for the sheer act of being in motion, of being outside, of talking it all in. Not in a hurry.

Exploring the world is one of the best ways to explore the mind, and walking travels both terrains. -Rebecca Solnit

Some folks espouse walking meditation. I'm with them on that. I find it more difficult and less helpful to sit cross-legged than to be in motion. My mind wants to ramble.

I'm glad I wandered across Solnit and her book. Thinking about what I want out of running, out of life, where I'm going, sometimes I need to be reminded not to be in a hurry. Not to be indoors. Not to miss what's going on around me. Some of the lessons inherent in walking somewhere. Anywhere.

...a certain kind of wanderlust can only be assuaged by the acts of the body in motion, not the motion of the car, boat, or plane. -RS