It’s been a spell.
Sixteen months and three days since the last time this newsletter has gone out.
I’m jumping right into it again. Hope you’re still interested.
It’s been a season of storms. Thick air and warm winds shuffling leaves, darkening clouds weirdly side-lit and glowing gun-metal grey, abruptly shifting to a sickly yellow. It feels like any minute all hell is going to break loose and the sky will explode. Maybe not the best moment for a walk. Or maybe it is.
I’m walking my local section of the Appalachian Trail-a raised, boardwalk built over watery meadow and through tall reeds and cattails. Recently, the boards on this section of the trail have been replaced-not yet burnished the weathered gray they’ll turn by the fall. The path is book-ended by northeastern forests of maple, oak, and dying ash, obscured today by the gritty haze of Canadian wildfires.
The air is heavy with moisture-rain will be welcome not only to break the heat that’s been building the last four days, but to wash the grit out of the air.
I try my voice out: lines from the heart sutra, a splintery whisper and sandpaper rasp at the back of my throat.
So far, it’s been a ruminative walk: reflexively thinking my way through what’s been going on in the long interval between posts, what’s been going on most intensely the last few days.
It’s evening, just dusk. The rise-and-fall ratcheting of cicadas and the shorter rasps of crickets are everywhere. There’s a lone bird-a solitary gray catbird, warning me off.
I’m alone on the path, which is unusual, but welcome. In the humidity and heat, sweat is clinging to my beard.
Lately, living twists on me. Turns, runs up and down, jerks sideways. My circumstances, it turns out, are less stable than I’d thought-this last week I’ve been thrown off-balance and my thinking has gone all akimbo, all elbows and knees all over the place.
Just the walking is the thing to break open my head. Just the next step. That’s what I’m doing out here tonight.
Slowly my thinking stretches out, settles down and quiets. Air and silence that’s the brush of the wind, the cicadas and catbird calling start to fill that widening gap in my head.
Settling a little bit more deeply into the path as I walk, paying attention to footsteps gently, the planks of the boardwalk creaking with my weight.
Just each step. Just each sound. Reminders.
Oh, right: it turns out-constantly surprising to me-there’s a path that reveals itself as I walk. A falling away of complexity in the simplicity of the next step, and the step after. That akimbo thinking starts to settle down a little.
Seeing where I’m resistant to the next twisty thing, exploring where I’m pushing back against my experience. Ease into bare attention. It’s not so complicated.
Living is as simple as I let it be. As simple as taking a step, as simple as just listening. Or as complex as I make it.
I’m working on the simplifying. What’s important? What’s urgent?
What’s extra?
That’s suddenly freshening the evening: refreshing life every time I embrace the opportunity of the next step; every time I stay open to the completely unknown possibility of that next step. With each step, beginning again. With each breath, beginning again.
I want to be true to that breath, to be responsible to the opportunity living offers-to pay it all attention. How do I respond to this moment, this constantly freshening-but not always fun-experience?
Turning my face up, rain taps on my closed eyelids and runs down my face, cooling across my collarbone. Take a step and feel the breeze of movement.
I stop and take off my boots and socks. Feeling the planks under my bare feet. Pretty solid stuff, in this moment.
What is it again that I’m resisting?
Pretty solid stuff, in this moment, staying open and paying attention. Taking the next step, cleanly. Just walking.
What’s been going on in the interval? Exactly that. Exactly this. I’m just going to keep walking. And that feels exactly alive.