At our In nature, With Nature retreat yesterday, I lead a walk through some little know parts of Renfrew, relating the impact of industrialization on the natural environment. As we walked I added comments about the ways that our growth as an industrial and railway town had changed the landscape. I also noted how, with the economic shift of the past 30 years, the character and landscape has changed again, leaving scars of a huge scale. We paused at the old industrial zone with empty and collapsing foundries and grain mills. We passed through a factory site, unnamed by any of our group, which showed rusting machine mounts and concrete slabs. The whole site was nearly entirely overgrown with trees and shrubs and now anonymous.
We walked past the main town recycling site and noted how much land in our town needs to be reserved for waste management. Later we strolled through Mateway Park. I explained the emergence of the modern “park” as a civilizing space in modern urban landscapes. It was interesting to appreciate how much we value these as “natural” spaces and forget how much of the space of an urban park is carefully premeditated and preserved to appear in a form that planners consider to be nature-like. We observed the scattering of sports facilities and zones around the park and how these structured recreation spaces belong to the same concept of the modern park. Organized sports arose at the same historical period as the modern park and provide the place for those who use structured space for structured activities. The ideas of solitary strolling, interaction with the environment and of a wild space are all absent.
Yours , on the journey,
Ray
Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet
Thich Nhat Hahn
Several times a day I and one or more of my dogs will take a walk down the street to one of several parks that we have at our disposal. This is not a demanding routine but familiar nonetheless. People walking and dogs walking are two very different worlds. We humans will set off from the front door at a brisk pace, purposeful and directed. We have a route and a destination in mind. As we travel the route towards the destination we enjoy the sights and sounds, perhaps a few social opportunities, and the walk is more or less uneventful. For a dog, from the moment we set foot on the path away from the front door, the experience is first and foremost at ground level. What may be going on up above us or down the street is relatively unimportant. Of utmost importance are smells. As soon as we leave the front porch there are smells on the lawn, smells on the laneway, smells around the trees, smells at the edge of the road, smells on the tires of the cars. Theirs is a world of smells.
Where our walking is shaped by a destination and a route, a dog’s walk is shaped by territory, by history, and by the critical task of establishing one’s importance in the environment. There is no distinction between a tire, a blade of grass or the most archetypal of spaces, a fire hydrant. What matters is the identifying scent left behind.What matters is being the freshest and strongest of scents. The top dog.
As we walk these issues do not alter any importance. Designating territory right off the porch is every bit as important [or so it seems] as any bush or clump of grass anywhere along the route. It seems that my dogs can take a break from this territorial obsession for brief periods of time, apparently enjoying running around or circling around my feet as we walk. Nevertheless, such distractions are short-lived. Over and over again, they come back to that smell that calls them like a siren song, ever enticing, ever challenging, with no possibility of not responding.
We each have our needs as we walk around streets and parks of our neighbourhood. We each seek out the corners and vistas that satisfy our needs each time we walk. The challenge Is always to respect the needs and priorities of each other and find a pace and rhythm, so that the return to the front porch brings satisfaction, at least for the moment.
Yours, on the journey,
Ray
Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet
Thich Nhat Hahn
Sometimes, when a path grows with use and new side-trails open up, they earn the right to have a name of their own. We started this blog a couple of years ago as the blog associated with the Padakun initiative. Now its necessary to distinguish the blog, as a weekly commentary on walking topics, from the main Padakun website, which is more of a hub for what has grown into a few different Padakun-centred projects, like KAPPS.
As of this post we announce the new name for this blog as Footprints. In this space we will continue to post weekly reflections and information related to walking. The emphasis will remain on some of the more contemplative aspects of walking and related most specifically on my walking experience here on the trails and pathways of Renfrew County.
Padakun has spun off its first major projects in the form of Ray’s Walk Like A Mountain (WLM) book and the Kick and Push Pedestrian Society (KAPPS), and each of these have prospered in their own way. They will each continue to have their own blog-trails, and we encourage all our followers to check them out too.
Starting this Fall, 2015, we will expand into 2 more projects. The first will take the form of a more scholarly exploration of what we introduced in WLM as “contemplative walking”. We would like to reach across disciplines and determine what we can learn from relatively new sub-discipline known as eco-psychology or eco-therapy. Over the coming year we will examine the main works in this field and try to articulate a larger description for contemplative walking, as well as inviting shared study with others in this micro-field of study.
The second project is just taking shape and is much more practically-oriented. It has occurred to us that most walkers enjoy their walking in a sometimes messy and trash-spoiled environment. We would like to introduce Blue Box Walks as a project that combines our favourite activity, walking, with a little more responsible engagement with the places we walk. Over the next few months we will unfold this project and how you can participate and even introduce it to your neighbourhood.
Yours , on the journey,
Ray
Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet
Thich Nhat Hahn
I went out on the K and P trail this week with my boy, Josh, and more or less had the trail to myself. There were two occasions where I came across fellow travellers and it brought home to me the difference between walkers and other travellers. This is hardly a scientific analysis, but interesting nonetheless, to see the distinction so clearly.
The first to come along was a couple on what is known around here as “a side-by side”, meaning an ATV where the driver and the main passenger sit beside each other, as opposed to one in front of the other, as they might on a motorcycle. They crept up on me, a very respectful and reasonable pace, and passed me in the way that I appreciate, not inconveniencing Josh or I as we each went off in our separate directions. As I usually notice with riders, they chug along making considerable noise, breezing the copious amounts of gasoline fumes, and restricting their interaction with the trail and its periphery to what one can see through the hole in the helmet, cruising at 25 mph. There is scarcely any physical effort required for their trip, and I’ve been told by riders that such riding can have a negative effect on one’s body.
Shortly after that, the next traveller was a young man on a bicycle. He did not have any helmet, shame on him, and had is personal music device plugged into both ears. Unlike the ATV riders, he barely noticed me, and whisked by with barely an acknowledgement. I can only hope that the landscape made more of an impression on him then did my presence. I paused to speculate on what he might remember from his trip once he arrived home.
As others have written, walking is the most immediate means of crossing the landscape, be that urban or rural. The Walker can only have an immediate, intimate and fully physical relationship with what surrounds him/her. These different kinds of riders seem to reduce the landscape to background noise or incidental scenery, rather than the immediate setting of one’s travel.
Yours , on the journey,
Ray
Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet
Thich Nhat Hahn
