A friend and I took a long, leisurely tracking walk the other day, but our schedules forced us to rush the last couple of miles. I had just reached a feeling of closeness to nature when we realized it was getting late and we had to pick up the pace. Once home, I felt pangs of regret for the delights and mysteries I had hurried past. It felt lonely and disrespectful.
I realized I can’t go for a hike anymore. My walks in nature are no longer about getting from point A to point B or putting on miles for my fitness program. Moving through the countryside is more of a two-way conversation than a self-absorbed experience. Nature is constantly communicating with me, telling me stories, putting puzzles together, revealing the secrets of hidden wildlife, secrets of the earth itself. I communicate back with my curiosity and attention to details that reveal the deeper stories of the landscape. It is an intimate relationship in which nature is always ready to teach me as much as I can absorb.
Mother Nature reaches out to the way-seeker and offers, as Earnest Thompson Seton so eloquently said, “…the twelve secrets of the underbrush, the health of sunlight and the suppleness of body, the unafraidness of the night, the goodness of rain, the story of a trail, the aloofness of knowing.” But, as he said so long ago, “when you have found that trail, you are thereby ordained a guide and you must give it to the world or lose it.”
I know I must pay my respects to the world I move through it, lest I break that sacred covenant and find myself shut out once again. I’ve learned to start a walk with a short prayer, not to some institutionalized figure, but to the most local gods of all. I take several steps, slowing down further with each step. I open up my senses—hearing, feeling, vision, movement—and I simultaneously quiet myself, walking more lightly and fluidly, lowering the profile I present to the world around me, merging with the landscape. I let go of the purpose and the destination.
I’ve come to call this state “walking in an ongoing dynamic realization.” I like the tangy sound of that phrase. Now, a walk is a constant process of becoming more aware and letting the world around me become more real. Getting off trails, even for just a short while, can help make this shift. Once released from the power of the trail and the mental ruts and inattention it can drive us into, we can pay attention to the feel of the ground, the patterns of foliage, the light and dark, the course of the watersheds, and the sense of where we are located on the land. Once we begin paying attention, the rhythm of our walking changes profoundly. We stop and start frequently, and crouch down and get back up continually. I’m convinced this is a better form of exercise, leading to a more complete state of fitness because it involves our whole physical body while engaging our minds, releasing them from their endless inner loops.
What happens next is remarkable—we begin to develop a greater capacity to tap into deeper levels of our unconscious awareness. Our senses are always busy taking in everything around us, even though we are usually either too distracted or too focused to be aware of it. The amount of information our senses bring in is overwhelming and our minds filter most of it out, delivering only the tiny sliver of what we consider most pertinent to our conscious awareness.
As we slow down and pay more attention, we increase our ability to become more aware of what is otherwise shuttled into our unconscious memory. It is all there, everything we have experienced. Even things we were not consciously aware of at the time are accessible and searchable much later. With practice, more and more of what our minds were trained to tune out becomes available, and we perceive a much more complex version of what is going on around us. This cannot help but increase our power and well-being.
Another term for this state is immersion. This is how animals feel and relate to the world, and we can experience it, too. Unseparated, highly attuned, prepared to wade through it, to jump in and roll around in it, to let the flood of sensory input wash over us and begin to reveal its mysteries.
In this state of immersion, we take in the distant sounds and the tapestry of bird calls and winds blowing, waves drumming, the rise and fall of animal activity in response to our own presence. We slowly become wild and free. Nature around us continues to light up, and tiny details stand out more. There is something distinctly psychedelic about this approach, but it’s without the drawbacks of being drug-driven: We are in complete control of this state and can modulate it to any degree we want. We are activating a deep part of our brain and connecting with ancient patterns, so it can have a feeling of going through time or remembering past lives.
When walking in this state, all the details begin to fall into place and make sense. When glancing at a deer trail, for instance, the hoof-tip drags, the gait pattern and wobbles, the slight weight shifts and their pressure releases, the location and context, the timing, and the surrounding tracks and trails all become apparent and agree with each other. This is when we begin to merge into the animal and understand its feelings and intentions, its movement and state of mind. The landscape comes to life and tells its story.
On a recent walk on the estero bluffs, I headed toward the ridge and the forests, perhaps a little caught up in my head from the steady rhythm of my steps. I passed a muddy spot where I noticed some faint tracks that I couldn’t decipher. Examining them closely, I felt utterly stumped, until Mother Nature spoke. She reminded me where I was, how the landscape was changing with the first few pine trees. I was leaving the vole territory of the fields and entering mouse territory. There were mouse tracks in that mud, and in a blink it all came into focus. I could see that the mystery tracks, suddenly readable in detail, were from a fox hunting at the outer edge of its preferred forest habitat. It all fell into place, and at that moment, I felt fully in tune with the earth.
Richard Vacha is a Point Reyes Station resident and the founder of the Point Reyes Tracking School and the Marin Tracking Club.