WALKING VICTORIANS I was watching a terrific film about Charles dickens and his tragic relationship with actress Ellen Ternan called The Invisible Woman (highly recommend it, BTW). In the film we get a glimpse of the Victorian pastime of outdoor walking.
In the scene we see Dickens and Ternan strolling in the countryside. Because, like many Victorians, their relationship was frowned on by polite society, they took to the relative privacy of the walking paths for their time together.
You see a similar thing in Pride and Prejudice, for the same reasons.
Thanks to the folks who attended our two monthly events recently. Last weekend we explored indoor and outdoor walking in a special Walk-tober workshop. (For more on Walk-tober) In the indoor part we worked with two labyrinths, one the classic Greek model, the other, the manda-lab I developed in Walk Like A Mountain. We used them as both walking experiences and as visualization aids. The participants found the manda-lab very effective as a true mandala, that is, a visual symbol for meditation practices. At the right you can see how we combined the two on the floor. The white is the manda-lab, the yellow is the Greek model. In the second part of that workshop, we learned Nordic poling technique and took a walk along the rail-bed walking trail just across from the Centre.
Over this past weekend we gathered once more for the monthly KAPPS walk. This walk took us from Goshen road to Campbell Road, just outside Arnprior. This is a very straight and flat trail but a nice mix of open fields and gentle forest. Two highlights were seeing the work on the highway extension very much up close, as the excavation comes right up to the trail at one point, and the other was passing the abandoned mushroom greenhouse experiment from a decade or so ago. I was reminded of the similarly optimistic and equally ill-fated experiment with tomato and cucumber growing in Newfoundland back in the 80's.
Yours , on the journey, Ray Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet Thich Nhat Hahn
