High Desert Travel

On Friday, we drove from Red Bluff to Sacramento, and then from Sacramento to Reno, Nevada.  It was cloudy and cool all day, but no rain.  Donner Pass and the Sierra were shockingly devoid of snow.  It is 270 miles from Red Bluff to Sacramento to Reno. 

We stayed at the Peppermill Hotel in Reno.  It was very busy with Valentine's Day visitors.  A lovely room, a beautiful casino atmosphere, sumptious dining, and all at a considerable expense.

We left on Saturday morning and drove east on Interstate 84 to Winnemucca, Nevada.  They we drove north on U.S. 95 to Burns Junction, and then northwest on Oregon Route 78 to Burns, Oregon.  We stayed Saturday night in Burns.  It is 391 miles from Reno to Burns. 

Clear skies, dry, and dramatic high desert views in all directions.

Great Basin Desert Realms

 

Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu, Chapter 74

Dao De Jing, Laozi
Chapter 74 

"The people do not fear death,
Why threaten them with death?
Suppose the people always fear death,
One who does strange things,
I shall seize and kill,
Then who dares to do strange things?
Killing is carried out by the executioner.
To replace the executioner and kill,
Is like chopping wood in place of the master carpenter.
To chop wood in place of the master carpenter,
Rarely one does not hurt one's own hand."
-  Translation by Ellen M. Chen, Chapter 74

"If the people do not stand in awe of death,
What is the point of threatening them with the death penalty?
But even suppose the people were in constant fear of death,
Who would dare to seize the evil-doers and slaughter them?
Leave killing to the Great Slayer.
He who usurps the place of the Great Slayer
Is like one who seeks to assist a master joiner with an axe.
Now he who assists a master joiner with an axe
Rarely fails to injure his own hands."
-  Translated by Herman Ould, 1946, Chapter 74  

"If the people do not fear death, how can one frighten them with death?
If we teach people to fear death, then when one rebels he can be seized and executed; after that who will dare to rebel?
There is always an officer to execute a murderer, but if one takes the place of the executioner, it is like taking the place of a skilled carpenter at his hewing.
If one takes the place of the skilled carpenter he is liable to cut himself.
Therefore do not interfere with Tao."
-  Translated by Dwight Goddard, 1919, Chapter 74 

民不畏死.
奈何以死懼之.
若使民常畏死, 而為奇者, 吾得執而殺之, 孰敢.
常有司殺者殺.
夫司殺者.
是大匠斲.
夫代大匠斲者, 希有不傷其手矣.
- Chinese characters, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 74

min pu wei ssu.
nai ho yi ssu chü chih.
jo shih min ch'ang wei ssu, erh wei ch'i chê, wu tê chih erh sha chih, shu kan.
ch'ang yu ssu sha chê sha.
fu tai ssu sha chê sha.
shi wei tai ta chiang cho.
fu tai ta chiang cho chê, hsi yu pu shang ch'i shou yi.
-  Wade-Giles (1892) Romanization, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 74

"If the people are not afraid to die,
How can you threaten them with death?
If the people are kept in constant fear of death,
And if it were possible to arrest and put to death the law-breakers,
Who would dare do this?
It is the master executioner who does the killing.
To assume the role of the master executioner and do the killing for oneself
Is like carving wood for oneself
Instead of leaving it to the master carpenter.
Those who carve wood for themselves
Instead of leaving it to the master carpenter
Rarely escape without cutting their own hands."
-  Translated by Keith H. Seddon, Chapter 74   

"Sí los hombres no temen a la muerte,
¿Cómo atemorizarlos con la muerte?
Pero si temen a la muerte,
como siempre temen,
y el que viola la ley puede ser apresado y ejecutado,
¿quién se atreverá entonces a violar la ley?
Existe siempre un funcionario Ejecutor.
Matar, para el Gran Ejecutor,
es como cortar madera para el maestro carpintero;
será afortunado si no se hiere su propia mano."
-  Translation from Wikisource, 2013, Capitulo 74

"When the people do not fear death, of what use is it to overawe them with it as a penalty?
And if they were always held in fear of death, and I could lay my hand upon all evil doers and slay them, would I dare to do it?
There is always the Great Executioner!
For one to usurp that office is like a novice cutting out the work of a great architect.
Such a one rarely fails to cut his own hands!"
-  Translated by Walter Gorn Old, 1904, Chapter 74

"Why use death as a deterrent, when the people have no fear of death?
Even supposing they shrank from death as from a monster, and by playing on their terror I could slay them, should I dare?
There is one who inflicts sentence of death.
To usurp his functions and to kill would be to assume the role of Master-Carpenter.
There are few who can act as Master-Carpenter without cutting their hands."
-  Translated by C. Spurgeon Medhurst, 1905, Chapter 74 

I also suggest reading: "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" by Oscar Wilde. 

Chapter 74 of the Tao Te Ching

Chapter and Thematic Index to the Tao Te Ching

English Language Translators' Index

Ripening Peaches: Taoist Studies and Practices

Taoism: A Selected Reading List 

Is Humor a Virtue?

I thoroughly enjoy books about virtues, virtue ethics, the good life, happiness, excellence, character, and the right way for human beings to live.  

For a wonderfully lucid, insightful, witty, sophisticated, and, at times, brilliant account of eighteen virtues, read Professor André Comte-Sponville's 1996 bestseller, A Small Treatise on the Great Virtues: The Uses of Philosophy in Everyday Life.  The virtues discussed in these stylish and penetrating essays are:  Politeness, Fidelity, Prudence, Temperance, Courage, Justice, Generosity, Compassion, Mercy, Gratitude, Humility, Simplicity, Tolerance, Purity, Gentleness, Good Faith, Humor, and Love.  The ideas of many great thinkers about these virtues are are analyzed and discussed in this fine book.  

"I don't believe any more than Spinoza did in the utility of denouncing vice, evil, and sin.  Why always accuse, why always condemn?  That's a sad ethics indeed, for sad people."  The study of virtues shows us at our best, where we succeed in doing good, where we are noble, how we might use practical reasoning, and our highest aspirations as human beings.  

Is humor a virtue?  Think about it.    

A kindly theologian is apt to ask those three traditional and perplexing questions:  "Who are we?  Where do we come from?  Where are we going?"  To which a witty practical man, like Pierre Dac, might reply, "As for me personally, well, I'm me, I've come from home, and that's where I'm headed."
Sometimes, it is best to keep it simple, and have a sense of humor.

Chen T'ai Chi Ch'uan Short 18 Form

I have enjoyed practicing this short Chen Taijiquan form for the past five years.  It was developed by Grandmaster Chen Zhenglei.

Chen Taijiquan Short 18 Movement Form Webpage

List of Movements of the Chen Taijiquan 18 Movement Short Form

Chen Taijiquan Old Frame First Form Laojia Yilu Webpage


Chen Style Tai Chi Essential 18 Postures with Patrick Martin.  Instructional DVD, 2 DVDs, 238 minutes.  Disk 1, 130 Minutes.  Jade Dragon Tai Chi International, Empty Circle Productions, 2008.  VSCL.  Patrick Martin is a student of Grandmaster Chen Zhenglei, and has been practicing and teaching Chen style Tai Chi for the last 20 years.  Detailed instructions for each movement sequence.  This DVD would be my first choice for an excellent instructional DVD on the Chen 18 Form.  


Watch Grandmaster Chen Zhenglei perform the short form he created:

Pulling Onions Again

Planting winter branch cuttings - talk about getting something from almost nothing. 
My mind is a sea I cannot see into; I merely skim along its surface.
Be careful not to stand up for that which will cause your downfall.    
God may be very smart, but he is a poor communicator.
What ought to be cannot be derived from what is the case, but a reasonable person ought not to ignore what is the case.  
Most tire from hatefulness; cheerfulness is abiding.
Stubborn facts are loosened up with novelty.
The act, the deed, the doing are the primary considerations. 
Keep moving― just like a cyclist that must keep pedaling and moving and avoiding falling down.
To many the sun is a god and the earth is a goddess; and, our imaginations are boundless.  
Don't kid yourself: seeing is not necessarily believing. 
If you think you are damned if you do or damned if you don't, your not thinking creatively enough. 
The ten thousand things are more enchanting than the Silent One. 
To lift the mind, move the body.
A calloused palm and dirty fingernails precede a Green Thumb. 
Absolutes squirm beneath realities. 
The empty garden is already full.
Evidence may support the pessimists' views, but optimists get to smile more.
A gardener is no farmer, he is much too impractical.
The month determines the mood.
A leaf bud - hope visible. 

Pulling Onions: 785 Quips and Sayings of an Old Gardener by Mike Garofalo

Months and Seasons

The Spirit of Gardening

Guiding Principles for Transformative Practices

"Some Guiding Principles for Integral Practices and Institutions That Support Them:

They promote a simultaneous development of our various faculties.
They generally require mentors, rather than a single guru.
They require a strong and developing autonomy.
They are facilitated by personal traits that promote creativity in general.
Though they encourage individual autonomy, they require surrender at times to transformative agencies beyond ordinary functioning.
They require patience and the love of practice for its own sake.
They utilize inherited all-at-once responses, or psychosomatic compliance for high-level change.
They utilize the manifold changes catalyzed by images and altered states.
They enlist more that one mediation to achieve particular outcomes.
They surpass limits by negotiation rather than force.
They depend upon improvisation.
They utilized images of unity.
They require and facilitate conscious transitions between different states of consciousness.
They depend on a developing awareness that transcends psychological and somatic functioning.
They orient all our capacities and somatic processes toward the extraordinary live arising in us."
- Michael Murphy, "The Future of the Body: Explorations Into the Further Evolution of Human Nature," 1992, pp. 579-586. 

Lifestyle Advice from Wise Persons

The Good Life

A Matter of Taste

The mind-Body arts and disciplines I practice and write about are useful for maintaining fitness and good health, helping with self-defense at a number of levels, encouraging oneself and others to be peaceful and calm, reducing anxieties and tension, balancing internal forces, opening one up to interesting cultural and philosophical Eastern traditions, and having a dignity and beauty associated with their practice.  I judge them to be "good," and exemplars of "good taste."  They seem right and noble to me, based on broader judgments as to value, and not just my personal preferences or habits.       

"Well, a vast number of our moral perceptions also are certainly of this secondary and brain‑born kind. They deal with directly felt fitnesses between things, and often fly in the teeth of all the prepossessions of habit and presumptions of utility. The moment you get beyond the coarser and more commonplace moral maxims, the Decalogues and Poor Richard's Almanacs, you fall into schemes and positions which to the eye of common‑sense are fantastic and overstrained. The sense for abstract justice which some persons have is as eccentric a variation, from the natural-history point of view, as is the passion for music or for the higher philosophical consistencies which consumes the soul of others. The feeling of the inward dignity of certain spiritual attitudes, as peace, serenity, simplicity, veracity; and of the essential vulgarity of others, as querulousness, anxiety, egoistic fussiness, etc‑-are quite inexplicable except by an innate preference of the more ideal attitude for its own pure sake. The nobler thing tastes better, and that is all that we can say. “Experience” of consequences may truly teach us what things are wicked, but what have consequences to do with what is mean and vulgar?"  ....


"The word "taste" has perhaps got too completely associated with arbitrary liking to express the nature of judgments of value. But if the word be used in the sense of an appreciation at once cultivated and active, one may say that the formation of taste is the chief matter wherever values enter in, whether intellectual, aesthetic or moral.  Relatively immediate judgments, which we call tact or to which we give the name of intuition, do not precede reflective inquiry, but are the funded products of much thoughtful experience. Expertness of taste is at once the result and the reward of constant exercise of thinking.  Instead of there being no disputing about tastes, they are the one thing worth disputing about, if by "dispute" is signified discussion involving reflective inquiry.  Taste, if we use the word in its best sense, is the outcome of experience brought cumulatively to bear on the intelligent appreciation of the real worth of likings and enjoyments.  There is nothing in which a person so completely reveals himself as in the things which he judges enjoyable and desirable, Such judgments are the sole alternative to the domination of belief by impulse, chance, blind habit and self-interest. The formation of a cultivated and effectively operative good judgment or taste with respect to what is aesthetically admirable, intellectually acceptable and morally approvable is the supreme task set to human beings by the incidents of experience."
-  John Dewey, The Construction of Good in the Quest for Certainty, 1929

My Happiness Walked Through the Centuries

"Today I walked on the lion-coloured hills
 with only cypresses for company, 
 until the sunset caught me, turned the brush
 to copper
 set the clouds 
 to one great roof of flame 
 above the earth,
 so that I walk through fire, beneath fire,
 and all in beauty. 
 Being alone
 I could not be alone, but felt
 (closer than flesh) the presence of those
 who once had burned in such transfigurations.
 My happiness ran through the centuries
 in one continual brightness.  Looking down,
 I saw the earth beneath me like a rose
 petaled with mountains,
 fragrant with deep peace."
 -  Elizabeth Coatsworth, On the Hills, 1924  

Walking: Quotes, Poems, Sayings.  Compiled by Mike Garofalo. 

When I walked my 3.6 miles (5.7km) on Friday morning it was a cool 47F with winds blowing at around 18 mph.  The sky was filled with dark flowing clouds, and the soil was still damp from yesterday's gentle rain.  In the afternoon, the winds roared through the tree leaves at 30 mph.  A very dramatic weather day in the North Sacramento Valley.  

I saw one red breasted robin, and hundreds of Brewer's blackbirds (Euphagus cyanocephalus) feeding in flocks while I was walking yesterday morning.  Over 640 species of birds have been identified in California.  Karen and I have listed the birds we have spotted and identified on or near our property in Red Bluff, California. 

Has anyone read the 2013 book: On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes by Alexandra Horowitz?  Maria Popova gave this book a very positive review.  It would seem to match my interests:  Sensory Awareness, Looking, and Walking. 

In the autumn months, the leaves of the Raywood Ash trees turn a crimson color  ...  "so that I walk through fire, beneath fire, and all in beauty."
 

Dao De Jing by Laozi, Chapter 75

Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu
Chapter 75

"The people starve because those above them eat too much tax-grain.
That is the only reason why they starve.
The people are difficult to keep in order because those above them interfere.
That is the only reason why they are so difficult to keep in order.
The people attach no importance to death,
Because those above them are too grossly absorbed in the pursuit of life.
That is why they attach no importance to death.
And indeed, in that their hearts are so little set on life
They are superior to these who set store by life."
-  Translation by Arthur Waley, Chapter 75 


"Why are the people starving?
Because their rulers devour too much in taxes.
That's why they starve.
Why are the people rebellious?
Because their rulers can't stop interfering.
That's why they rebel.
Why do the people make light of death?
Because they are intent on life.
That's why they make light of death.
Yet those who do not strive to live
are wiser than those who value life."
-  Translated by Tim Chilcott, 2005, Chapter 75 


民之飢, 以其上食稅之多, 是以飢.
民之難治, 以其上之有為, 是以難治.
民之輕死, 以其求生之厚, 是以輕死.
夫唯無以生為者, 是賢於貴生.
-  Chinese characters, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 75



min zhi ji, yi qi shang shi shui zhi, duo shi yi ji. 
min zhi nan zhi, yi qi shang zhi you wei, shi yi nan zhi. 
min zhi qing si, yi qi shang qiu sheng zhi hou, shi yi qing si. 
fu wei wu yi sheng wei zhe, shi xian yu gui sheng. 
-  Hanyu Pinyin (1982) Romanization, Daodejing, Chapter 75


 
"The people suffer from famine because of the multitude of taxes consumed by their superiors.
It is through this that they suffer famine.
The people are difficult to govern because of the (excessive) agency of their superiors (in governing them).
It is through this that they are difficult to govern.
The people make light of dying because of the greatness of their labours in seeking for the means of living.
It is this which makes them think light of dying.
Thus it is that to leave the subject of living altogether out of view is better than to set a high value on it."
-  Translated by James Legge, 1891, Chapter 75 

"El pueblo está hambriento.
Porque sus gobernantes lo agobian de impuestos, está hambriento.
El pueblo es rebelde. 
Debido a la intromisión de sus gobernantes, es rebelde. 
El pueblo no teme a la muerte.
Porque desea con ansia vivir, no teme a la muerte."
-  Translated from Chinese into English by Ch'u Ta-Kao, Translated from English into Spanish by Caridad Diaz Faes, Capitulo 75


"The people are hungry.
Because they who are over the food tax it heavily
That is why the people are hungry.
The people are difficult to govern.
Because the rulers trust in possessions and activities
That is why the people are difficult to govern.
The people make light of death.
Because they work hard in order to save their life,
That is why they make light of death.
A Master indeed is he whose life-activities are from within.
He excels all man in his application of Life."
-  Translated by Isabella Mears, 1916, Chapter 75  

Chapter 75 of the Tao Te Ching

Chapter and Thematic Index to the Tao Te Ching

English Language Translators' Index

Ripening Peaches: Taoist Studies and Practices

Taoism: A Selected Reading List 

Farewell, Pete Seeger

Peter "Pete" Seeger (May 3, 1919 – January 27, 2014) was an American folk singer and activist. 

I enjoyed attending two of his concerts in Los Angeles in the 1960's.  One concert was at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium and one at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium.  I played a number of his albums many hundreds of times. 

His ability to get everyone singing, clapping, and smiling was enchanting.  

Pete was a significant contributor to the civil rights movement, anti-war movement, liberal causes, and environmental activism.  He inspired us to be better people and better Americans.  His efforts to encourage people to clean up the Hudson River are legendary. 

Like many students in the 1960's, I sang folk songs alone and with small groups, played a guitar, and associated these activities with the counter-culture movement.  

Yes, I am one of those tender-hearted Liberals that Ann Coulter delights in insulting each day.  





We Shall Overcome

Pete, for me, was a truly decent, open-hearted, involved, and inspiring man!! 

I Wish I Had ...

"However that may be, I now wish that I had spent somewhat more of my life with verse. This is not because I fear having missed out on truths that are incapable of statement in prose. There are no such truths; there is nothing about death that Swinburne and Landor knew but Epicurus and Heidegger failed to grasp. Rather, it is because I would have lived more fully if I had been able to rattle off more old chestnuts — just as I would have if I had made more close friends. Cultures with richer vocabularies are more fully human — farther removed from the beasts — than those with poorer ones; individual men and women are more fully human when their memories are amply stocked with verses."

-  Richard McKay Rorty, 1931-2007  American Philosopher
   The Fire of Life, 2007


Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature: Thirtieth-Anniversary Edition


"We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives for ever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea."
-  A. C. Swinburne, "Garden of Proserpine"

Pushing Science Ahead

"In the end, it's probably impossible to tease out whether the heads or tails of science, the theory or the experiment, has done more to push science ahead." (DS, p36).  


"It is theory that decides what we can observe."
-  Albert Einstein

"Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object."
-  Charles Sanders Pierce

The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements  By Sam Kean.  Little, Brown and Company, 2010.  400 pages.  ISBN: 978-0316051644.  VSCL.  Subjects: Chemistry, Periodic Table, Science, Elements.  This book is the most interesting, informative, and well written book I have read in the last 60 days. 

The modern sciences of physics and chemistry have discovered or synthesized 118 Elements.  This fascinating subject can be studied through the graphical model of the Periodic Table of Elements first conceived in 1869 by the Russian chemist, Dmitri Medneleev.  Read the "Disappearing Spoon" for the fascinating story of the Table of the Elements. 

   

Swinging Arms Exercises

I developed a webpage on Bai Bi Yun Dong (Swinging Arms Exercises).  It it includes lessons on various forms of this popular exercise, an extensive bibliography and links, and a brief introduction. Here is my description of the Swinging Arms Form One.  I also use this exercise in my Yoga classes. 

1.  Swinging Arms Exercise - Form One

Swinging the Arms Forward and Back, Up and Down
Pendulum Swing

1.  Stand with your feet at a hip width distance apart, less than shoulder width, feet pointing straight ahead.  Keep the knees slightly bent.  This standing stance should be comfortable.  Release tension in the body, soften, stay loose, open the chest, keep an open mind - in short, maintain Sung. 
2.  Keep your head over your shoulders, and the head in line with the spine.  Lift the crown of the head and tuck the chin a little.  Shoulders are kept relaxed, but don't slouch.  Maintain central equilibrium.  Keep an upright posture. 
3.  The feet are grounded and rooted into the earth.  Feet remain flat on the floor during the entire exercise.  The feet should point straight ahead.  The knees are over the feet.   
4.  Look forward, soften and widen your visual focus.  Take in the whole practice scene.  Don't try to block sensory feelings, zone out, or escape being fully present in the simple here and now.
5.  Arms should be loose, relaxed, and hanging gently at the sides of your hips.  Hands should remain soft and relaxed. 
6.  Gently raise both arms up in front of the body, palms facing down.  Raise the arms up to about shoulder height or less, depending upon the mobility or comfort range of motion for your shoulder joint.  The arms are fairly straight with only a slight bend in the elbow. 
7.  Allow the arms to gently move down and back to the sides of your hips.  Continue to lift the arms up behind the body, palms facing up, to a height you are comfortable with, depending upon the mobility of your shoulder joint.  Most people draw the hands up behind the back at considerably less than a 30 degree angle up from the hips.  Then bring the arms downward until the hands are along sides of the hips.  The arms are fairly straight with only a slight bend in the elbow. 
8.  Continue moving both arms at the same time from the hips, up to about shoulder height or less in front, down to the sides of the hips, and up the back, then down to the hips.  Be gentle.  Take your time.  Both arms will gradually begin to effortlessly swing up and down, forward and back, up and down.  Relax!  The arms are fairly straight with only a slight bend in the elbow. 
9.  Breathing is natural, comfortable, effortless, unstrained.  Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth.  The tongue rests gently on the upper palate.  
10.  The knees will gently begin to bend and straighten slightly as the arms swing forward and back.  A swinging rhythm will establish a bending pattern and movement flow in the knees.  Don't keep the knees stiff, locked, or rigid.  Go with the flow. 
11.  Continue to swing the arms forward and back until you have warmed up your body, loosed the joints, and established a comfortable and flowing motion of swinging your arms.  Slowly increase the pace of your swinging. 
12.  Avoid rapidly snapping the lower arms or hands as you draw you arms downward from the front.   
13.  Enjoy swinging your arms forward and backward for as long as you like.  Start with a swinging practice of two to four minutes, and gradually increase the practice time as your body becomes conditioned to the exercise, your stamina increases, and you find benefits from doing this exercise. 
14.  As you near the end of the exercise period, slow the swinging pace down and reduce the range of motion in the swing.  Gradually slow down and finally stop.  Stand and rest for awhile.   
    This dynamic stretching exercise helps various parts of the body and is an excellent warm up exercise.  It stretches the biceps as you draw the arms back and up.  It stretches the triceps as you swing the arms up and forward.  The relaxed fingers and wrists are stretched on the downward fall of the arms (a nice counter to the flexed and tensed positions of the hands on a keyboard).  The shoulder joint and tendons benefit from the gentle range of motion activity, and the deltoid muscles are exercised.  The pectoral muscles are stretched on the backward movement of the arms.  Strength gains, although very modest, are primarily in the deltoids, latissimus, obliques, quadriceps, and trapesius.  If the swinging arms activity is continued long enough the heartbeat will increase slightly.  This kind of rhythmic activity has a calming effect on the body and reduces stress.  Stephen Sinatra, M.D., claims this exercise will benefit the thoracic duct and help the heart.  Chinese Qigong masters claim that Qi flow is enhanced and the body energized, blood pressure is reduced, and various diseases are prevented or healed. 
    There are alternative versions of this Swinging Arms exercise practiced and recommended by different folks.  Some people like to quietly count the repetitions on the forward up swing as it helps them to focus and maintain a regular breathing pattern.  Some people just swing one arm forward and back, and alternate between the arms.  Guo Lin's Qigong, a Walking Qigong, for cancer patients, alternates the arm swing from side to side, but the elbows are bent more and the waist turns from side to side as the arms swing upward.  Some people enjoy stepping in place or walking forward in a coordinated manner (e.g., Yang Jwing Ming) as they swing their arms forward and backward, up and down.  Swinging the arms or pumping the arms during brisk walking is a popular exercise.  Some swing the arms higher up in the front, up to face level or higher.  Some rise on their heels as they swing the arms up.  Some rock the toes up and down, or the heels up and down as they swing their arms.  Some like to talk with others as they swing their arms, others prefer being quiet.  Some hold very light dumbbells or kettlebells in the hands while doing this exercise for greater strength gains, although repetitions are kept low.   
-  By Michael P. Garofalo, Swinging Arms Exercises: Bai Bi Yun Dong

                                     摆 臂 运 动

Here is an example from the Old Oak Taiji School:

Walking into the Wild Places

“There there is nothing like a wilderness journey for rekindling the fires of life. Simplicity is part of it. Cutting the cackle. Transportation reduced to leg – or arm – power, eating irons to one spoon. Such simplicity, together with sweat and silence, amplify the rhythms of any long journey, especially through unknown, untattered territory. And in the end such a journey can restore an understanding of how insignificant you are --- and thereby set you free.”
-   Colin Fletcher, The River

"Freedom - to walk free and own no superior."
-   Walt Whitman

"For someone who walks regularly, their body is better able to deliver oxygen to all systems, including the brain, because they’ve improved their cardiovascular function. Not surprisingly, regular walkers report better mental clarity and ability to focus. Creativity is enhanced because walkers have the ability to relax their mind and let it wander around while they’re walking. Outdoor strollers can have the benefit of beautiful scenery as well as just seeing things from a different perspective, which stimulates creative thought and the imagination.  Whether you want to improve your body, your mind or both, the benefits of walking should encourage you to make the time to do it."
-  Mental Benefits of Walking, Creating a Good Life

"People need wild places. Whether or not we think we do, we do. We need to be able to taste grace and know again that we desire it. We need to experience a landscape that is timeless, whose agenda moves at the pace of speciation and glaciers. To be surrounded by a singing, mating, howling commotion of other species, all of which love their lives as much as we do ours, and none of which could possibly care less about us in our place. It reminds us that our plans are small and somewhat absurd. It reminds us why, in those cases in which our plans might influence many future generations, we ought to choose carefully. Looking out on a clean plank of planet earth, we can get shaken right down to the bone by the bronze-eyed possibility of lives that are not our own."
-   Barbara Klingsolver  

Walking: Quotes, Sayings, Poems, Lore, Information

Karen and I will soon be taking a road trip to the Great Basin Desert in central and northern Nevada, and up into Eastern Oregon Desert ecosystem to the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument.  We will be going through Sacramento, Reno, Winnemucca, Burns, John Day, Baker City, Pendleton, and on to Portland.  

Unlike Colin Fletcher, we will be staying in motels at night while on this road trip.  No backpacking adventure this time. However, we will take many walks in the desert on this trip. 

We enjoyed a road trip through the Great Basin Desert in central Nevada from Reno to Ely, along US 50, back in February of 2007.  This desert area is higher in elevation (3,000 - 5,000 feet) than the Mojave and Colorado desert regions in Southern California.  

Walking in the desert really gives one a sense of grand spaciousness and a connection with the simplicity of stone, sand, and big sagebrush.  Walking in the higher elevations brings you views of vast valleys, rugged mountains, and into intimate contact with the pinyon-juniper woodlands.    

Tips for Walking in the Desert 

Desert Hiking Tips

I've been hiking in Death Valley, CA, many times.