“Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.”
Since September, I have walked close to 1000 kilometers. That’s a little over 600 miles. I am not fluent in kilometers and I am not using reliable technology – no Garmin, no Apple Watch – relying instead on the unreliable phone in my pocket, old-fashioned maps and math. So the accuracy of the total distance is a mystery. But what I know for certain is that I walked at least 100 km on a small island in the middle of the Atlantic, then walked at least 300 km from Portugal to Spain, and have since walked at least another 400 km in the 45 days since returning to Massachusetts. I realize my math is not adding up, but accounting for the days I was not monitoring any distances at all but still covering them, things are edging closer to that 1000 kilometer mark.
For a very long time now, I have loved exploring the world by foot. Every city I ever lived in became my own personal pedestrian challenge – how far can I walk without taking the subway, how long can I live here without needing a car – and I loved discovering how the neighborhoods were connected with all the tiny details that you just don’t see whizzing by in a car or a train. When I was living in Seoul and Tokyo, I regularly spent entire days walking from neighborhood to neighborhood to neighborhood infinity, exploring every street and left turn I could find, connecting the dots between subway stations from the street rather than inside the tunnels that ran below it. It was like slowly putting together a puzzle, with all the pieces of each city being put into place step by step.
I was a little late to come to this walking thing, but I was surrounded by it for most of my life. My grandfather was an avid hiker and proud member of the Appalachian Mountain Club, doing volunteer trail maintenance and regularly joining group hikes until his death at the age of 81. When it came to books and movies, I was always drawn to the “long journey” ones. In fact, the very first blog post I added to this website nearly 10 years ago was about my childhood fascination with the story of Peter Jenkins, the man from the cover of National Geographic who walked across America.
But it wasn’t until my 20’s that I bought my first pair of hiking boots. My friend Trish had moved to Arizona for grad school and taken up desert hiking, which I didn’t even know was a thing. Until then, going for a hike meant specifically walking in the woods. I started with the trails of South Mountain and Camelback in Phoenix, then backpacking trips away from the city and eventually backpacking the Grand Canyon rim to rim. I was hooked.
Walking long distances is a profoundly intentional act of connection. Connection to the world around you, to your community, the natural world and the self. For me, walking is a contemplative practice, where my mind is able to process complex information, work through difficult emotions, problem solve and move stuck energy. It’s when I am most creative and new ideas coalesce. Taking a long walk creates an opportunity for wonder and will deliver whether it’s a passing conversation with a stranger, nature totally showing off, a sudden revelation or an unexpected encounter with an old friend. It is an invitation to fall in love with the world, to be astonished by it, again and again.
I have wanted to get back to writing online for awhile now. I loved writing my blog Little Miss Twig during my time living in Korea and Japan – documenting that experience through photography and storytelling helped me better understand the place and how it was changing me. And it connected me to so many wonderful people around the world. Since then, phones have commandeered our brains and social media has reduced everyone’s attention spans to half a sentence. I’ve gotten pretty good at writing in captions or emojis, but I have missed writing longform with a lens on my tiny corner of the world. I’m out of practice and don’t know where to start. But I’ve walked a lot the last few years. Hours at a time. And I decided that for now, that is what I want to write about.
In the coming weeks, I will write about our recent walk along the old pilgrimage routes of the Portuguese Camino, from Porto to Santiago, Spain. And I will write about the 78 kilometers of incredible hiking trails on our tiny Azorean island in the middle of the Atlantic. We have more walks planned so I will write about those, too. And I will probably write about places that I don’t walk to, and things that don’t have anything to do with walking.
Whatever happens, I promise you this: I will pay attention, I will be astonished, and I will tell about it.
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