walking after Walden

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From 1845 to 1847, Henry David Thoreau lived in a small cabin he built himself in the quiet woods of Massachusetts. He built his house for $28.12 (still less than $1,000 today) on some pretty prime lakefront real estate. It contained necessities, and no more. He mainly ate bread and the berries and legumes he could grow. His social circle was reduced to a few neighbors and visitors.

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I was assigned to read Walden, Thoreau’s account of this escapade, in high school English class, and got around to actually reading it about eight years later (Sorry, Mr. Farina). Yet, as any fellow spiritual bookworm knows, these things resurface when you are ready to listen, to receive them a little more, and only in the recent weeks have I so needed Thoreau’s thoughts to sit with my own:

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“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when it came to die, discover that I had not lived.” 

Walden, 74.

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And not, when it came to die, discover that I had not lived. That. That’s my constant nudge toward a personal Walden: catching myself red-handed in the act of this nonliving… as in, wasting a lot of time in this expensive, exhausting chase/race/rush toward…. wait, what exactly?

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So. From 2018 to 2019, I moved to rural coastal Honduras.

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Life was slow, internet was slower, and some afternoons involved nothing more than sitting by the boiling pot of beans, searching the yard for little sticks, feeding the fogón fire for three and a half hours, at least. After a while, I forgot that in some parts of the globe it was actually possible for a single human to wash a load of clothes, wash a load of dishes, get in some cardio, watch a documentary series, and heat up an already-made rotisserie chicken all at the same time.

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“I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life… to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and if it proved to be mean, why then get the whole genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world…” 

Walden, 74.

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Was it awful, wholly and genuinely mean, to go down to Central America and live like that, especially when there are fancy air-conditioned places with running warm water right here and a surplus of good entertainment and higher-paying jobs for a degree like that one? Nope.

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Of course there are objectively comfier situations out there, without the bug bites and the mattresses that could very well be hand-me-downs from WWI submarines. And I could never ever say a bad thing about a dependable hot shower.

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But we had a group of humans, some guitars, Bananagrams, the ocean, the mountains, the dear quiet, and too many mangoes. I watched far more sunrises and sunsets than I missed. We had countless heart-to-hearts while frying plantains.

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And while I initially found much to buy with the one “income” we ever received for our day jobs, my more generous housemates recognized that our monthly living stipend was more than we truly needed… and that there was plenty to share with neighbors who couldn’t buy their infant’s medication, or just some corn flour. Before even that, said neighbors welcomed our pale awkwardness into the heart of their community, invited us to lunches and weddings, on walks down the beach. In that stripped-down little life, the living abounded.

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Once last year, I was walking around the sand road toward our house’s back entrance, when I found my friend Adam standing in the middle of the yard and staring intently at a tree.

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“All good there, friend?”

“Yep. Just watching the ants.”

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Maybe that sounds concerning. Yet when I stopped and also watched that highway of a trillion ants carry leaves from thirty feet up in the sky down to their community hill, I understood, and I think if you leaned forward and listened very carefully to that scene you might hear a still, small voice from the Heavens say something along the lines of: “Finally someone notices these flippin’ ants! I’ve always thought it was one of my coolest projects!”

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“…or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.”

Walden, 74

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I suppose now is that next excursion.

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And what to make of that? What does that look like? asks the bean-boiling girl now back in the washing machine + Netflix world. If I’m not supposed to live in rural coastal Honduras for forever, how do I give a true account of it in this next excursion that seemingly could not be a starker contrast?

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I don’t get to know all of the answers, but I once had this nagging hunch that “walking” is a good one.

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In an ironic turn it was Amazon Prime who, based on my recent purchase of Walden, recommended that I check out another book by this wild Henry guy, the transcript of a lecture he gave nearly a dozen times in the years upon his return from Walden Pond, titled, Walking. He says:

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“I think I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend four hours a day at least–and it is commonly more than that—sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from all worldly engagements.”

Walking, 3

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And that escapade cost him $0.00…. still $0.00 today!

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Oh, to walk. In a new town. In your hometown, better yet. On the lunch break. With a friend, a dog, one’s own stormy brain. The decision to walk is very rarely a bad one.

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Thoreau notes in his lecture that the word “sauntering” originates from the Middle Ages with the people who “roved about the country” headed toward “Sainte Terre,” or “Holy Land.” Children would yell out, “‘There goes a Sainte-Terrer!’ a Saunterer, a Holy-Lander” when they saw them pass by (1). Recently my dad and I have committed to hiking at least two hours every Sunday, and I can attest it is a prayerful and sacred ritual as any.

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As I write this, I am mid-hike on a late Thursday afternoon, perched in an abandoned gazebo in the middle of a Western Pennsylvania forest. A middle-aged man walks by with his wife and kid (I love to see it!), looks at my notebook, the sprawled out copies of Walden and Walking, and the Notre Dame coat, and tries to figure it out.

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“Home from school?” he calls out. He thinks I’m a student, studying hard toward something bigger, home for Spring Break or the quarantine. That makes my circumstance make sense.

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“Already graduated!” I call back. “Just getting some writing in.”

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“Oh,” he says, and keeps walking by, perhaps ever so slightly faster so as to move his impressionable child out of the enigmatic gazebo hippie’s vicinity.

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I tend to forget that a solo hike to no destination in particular, and writing, just for kicks, about loving your life exactly as it is, is not normal here. Because I now understand it’s natural. Like watching ants move a trillion leaves.

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Thankfully, Thoreau’s Walking addresses this too.

“I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil–to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society.”

Walking, 1

And no, he doesn’t care if that’s a bit out there.

“I wish to make an extreme statement, if so I may make an emphatic one.”

Walking, 1

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If Thoreau’s Walking was countercultural in 1851, it is more so today, but maybe all the more needed. If we can neither live nor walk in the woods forever, what does it otherwise look like to move as a parcel of Nature rather than a piece of society? To saunter in a deep sense to a Heavenly rhythm when the worldly one is chasing, racing, rushing toward…. wait, what again, exactly?

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I have a case for his extreme statement, and it starts with a sitcom pitch: Take the girl who only just became accustomed to spending an entire afternoon feeding tiny sticks to the fire while watching the trees sway in a salty breeze… give that girl a loud, blinking headset….and place her behind the window of an American fast food restaurant drive-thru at peak lunch hour.

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In other words, me, a mere few hours ago.

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In January, I genuinely wanted nothing more than to find part-time people-oriented work in a cafe or diner. Now I wear a black and white “8.99 Coffee Subscription” baseball cap while standing behind the cash register at the busiest Panera Bread on the East Coast.

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Now, we humans are an adaptable species. I saw the rapid-paced madness, I saw the old woman who tapped her watch (her watch!) on the credit card screen to pay for her pecan braid and witnessed it work (it worked!?) when I had assumed that maybe it was just a cute senior moment. I saw the chance to dive in and give the mechanic performance being asked of me. I knew I could.

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But, back to that sitcom, and the case I’m making. If I brag here–and knowing my vain lil arse I probably will–know that I only intend to brag on behalf of God, of Nature, and not of me, who does not do this perfectly.

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I decided, in this job position, to stay committed to my Walden. I decided that I would never run, and if I caught myself running or feeling rushed, to breathe and remind myself that we are not made for that. When I started in the front bakery, I decided that I wanted to walk, and be happy, and slice those bagels with the grace and love of a Swedish ballerina. I wanted to take the time to genuinely delight in seeing every morning commuter, to laugh really hard with the young son when a bagel actually caught fire in the toaster and his father said, completely deadpan, “Yep, that’s perfect” as I patted down the flame.

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When I’m choosing to walk through it, I can really listen to this man’s specific need for four butter packs, I can come out from behind the register to bearhug my great aunt Aggie even though there’s a line, I can obsess over the older woman’s purple pixie haircut she just rocks (and watch her try not giggle because she knows she rocks it too), hear my coworker talk about how her genius twelve year-old makes her better, listen to Lacy the barista tell me how I must always have a job like this one and be a writer because like her Vietnamese mother said, “Life is like the cooking. If you have the right amount of all the spices, it’s a good dish. If you have too much of one spice and not enough another… not so good.” When I walk, I don’t just work there. I…live.

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And then this morning the managers decided that it would be a good idea to temporarily take me out of the front bakery and place me in… yes… drive-thru. At the drive-thru, this happened three times today: I put someone’s order in the system, sauntered about doing my part in filling up the cup of hibiscus iced tea or something, and subconsciously began loudly humming some show tune, only to look down and see the bright green light indicating the microphone was still on at the order station outside. Perfect.

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Ultimately, if you timed it, this walking method does not actually take much longer than if I were to just be a mechanical, stressed out maniac. I know this, because sometimes I slip, see an impatient face or a long line and get very overwhelmed and become a mechanical, stressed out maniac.

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Here’s the part where I’ll probably brag.

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When I am committed to it— to walking, to smiling into the eyes of the person in front of me, to singing and finding humor— you can give me the most in-a-rush, grumpy, rapidly-telling-me-the-complicated-order-you-can’t-possibly-expect-me-to-find-the-buttons-fast-enough-for-and-then-staring-all-of-us-down-as-it-takes-slightly-longer-than-twelve-seconds-to-fill-said-order person… and still… all of that tension just evaporates. I’m telling you, if I am just walking through it and wholly there, God scoots in, and this person and I will be genuinely smiling at one another by the end when that food is in their hands, sharing a mutual, “Hey, we’re okay” moment, probably with a laugh and sending one another back out on their day, recipients of some contagious joy. It’s a full-on transformation–I’d venture to say probably worth having the bread bowl forty seconds later than you would have otherwise.

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It’s the classic Tortoise-and-Hare scenario: Put the pace of Nature and the pace of the World in a race, and against all odds Nature wins every time.

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“So we saunter toward the Holy Land, till one day the sun shall shine more brightly… into our minds and hearts, and light up our whole lives with a great awakening light, as warm and serene and golden as on a bankside in autumn.”

Henry David Thoreau, Walking, 36

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Anyone up for a walk today?