Walk On, Dear Morning

I so enjoy quiet Friday mornings. Bundled up against the cool morning air, I stride out to greet the sun, sky, and earth. How exhilarating! I walk continuously for up to four miles, with an Inner Smile all the Way.

After about 20 minutes into my walk, suddenly I heard the loud quaking of many ducks. I looked up and there were probably over 500 ducks passing overhead. They were aligned into five V formations and one long angled line on the east side of the group. It was the largest group of ducks in flight that I had ever seen before. I stopped and stared until they moved northward and disappeared into the cloudy sky.


"Walking I am unbound, and find that precious unity of life and imagination, that silent outgoing self, which is so easy to loose, but which a high moments seems to start up again from the deepest rhythms of my own body. How often have I had this longing for an infinite walk - of going unimpeded, until the movement of my body as I walk fell into the flight of streets under my feet - until I in my body and the world in its skin of earth were blended into a single act of knowing."
- Alfred Kazin, The Open Street


"If you look for the truth outside yourself,
It gets farther and farther away.
Today walking alone, I meet it everywhere I step.
It is the same as me, yet I am not it.
Only if you understand it in this way
Will you merge with the way things are."
- Tung-Shan

Zuowang Daoist Meditation, Sitting in Forgetting

Walking for me enables me to achieve a state of mind that is truly effortless awareness.