Kindle Notes & Highlights
but at the very least pilgrims share the belief that their journeys will transform them.
my act of walking becomes my destination,
Today I pause to spend a moment with a delicate mountain laurel flower that has caught my eye on the side of the trail; I exhale and let that one thing fill me, then bow slightly as I continue up the trail. I imagine the whole system of which the flower is a part, the supernova that created the molecules of the mountain laurel flower, the creation of soil from the erosion of rocks, the seed that fell in that place, the light from the sun that generated the leaves. That single white flower is a gate to the whole.
As Pascal once put it, a pauper with lots of distractions is happier than a king with nothing to do.
I came to realize clearly, that mind is no other than mountains and rivers and the great earth. — DŌGEN93
The approach to hiking I’ve been sketching here helps us cultivate a way of paying attention, of being in the woods, that diverges from the desire to prove something or add a summit to our list of exploits. It’s about emptying ourselves of our drivenness and simply giving our attention to the act of walking and the place through which we move. Though we get sweaty, dirty, and covered with DEET, we are cleansing ourselves internally, and this, in turn, clears our sight.
We may not encounter the sacred or experience something worth labeling “epic,” and the liminality may be tame and short-lived, but we have gone on a journey, and if we have gone with openness and paid attention, we’ll see that we’ve returned with a boon. It may not be a vial of healing water, an epiphany, or deeper faith. At the very least, however, we’ve experienced something new. We may notice certain things for the first time, or see familiar things in a new light. We have woken up — at least a bit — to what is around us.
“The point is to make intimate contact with the real world, real self. Sacred refers to that which helps take us out of our little selves into the whole mountains-and-rivers mandala universe.”
As Sharon Daloz Parks puts it, “To be at home is to have a place in the scheme of things — a place where we are comfortable; know that we belong; can be who we are; and can honor, protect, and create what we truly love. To be at home within one’s self, place, community, and the cosmos is to feel whole and connected in a way that yields power and participation.”
