Rambles

Well, this past week, the backpack finally came out of the plastic and got used. Last Sunday, I spread out everything I had to date, cut off all the tags and began stuffing them into the pack. It wasn't exactly what I will be carrying, but it came to about the right weight, nearly 17 pounds. I decided that it was a good thing for the US Army Infantry that I had never been a part of them, although it might have come in handy now for ME if I had done some time with them. Mary and I walked a little over 6 miles in the heat of the south Georgia sun that afternoon. I came to the conclusion that I might have some 'getting-used-to" time for mileage on the trip, but it just might be doable.

The next morning, I put my still-loaded backpack and hiking boots in the car and headed down to our diocesan conference center for a clergy conference. That afternoon, we had a block of free time, so I went out, again in the heat of the afternoon sun, and did 7 miles by myself. It was an out and back trip and my main discovery was that I could not reach my own water bottle. I had to stop at the fire station on the way back and ask one of the guys to get it for me. It was either that, or take the whole backpack off and then have to put it on again and it just didn't seem worth all the effort. It's always good to find these things out. I suspect the two guys at the firestation were chuckling after I left.

Got another, shorter walk in one morning during the week back home. Then, headed out to another diocesan meeting on Friday down in Stella's neck of the woods, and in fact, stayed with Stella and her husband Friday night. I took all my Santiago stuff and after our afternoon and evening meetings, Stella and I went to her house and we hauled out all our gear and did 'show and tell' with each other. It was fun and exciting and energizing and uplifting. Stella and I have never had that long before to talk about the trip with one another. And so over a glass of wine and some boiled shrimp and some mullet spread and crackers that her husband, David, had made for us, we talked and talked.

Saturday morning, we got up while the moon was still a shiny sliver in the sky, to go walk a couple of miles together before our morning meetings started. We walked out of the house with Stella holding a flashlight on the brick path. Unfortunately, it didn't illuminate the couple of cobwebs that I went through, but I'm choosing to believe that the spiders involved were elsewhere on the web at the time. It was Stella's first time for walking with her backpack. As it turns out, it is the same pack as the one Mary and I have, just a size larger.

When I walk, I tend to think about all manner of things. Like whether squirrels in Spain chatter in a different accent than squirrels in Georgia. Would a Georgia squirrel, if put next to a Spanish squirrel (surely they have squirrels there?), cock its head a little, get a puzzled look on it's little face and go, "huh?" I think about how different time and space are when you walk from our normal life schedules. One day, as I started out walking, I was obviously walking too fast, and my boots and my calf and shin muscles were telling me as much. It felt like shin splints which I haven't had in years. So I slowed down. In another mile, I realized that I felt just fine; all it took was allowing myself to slow down, letting the leg muscles warm up, and enjoying the journey. It's good to know that my boots help look after me. I just have to learn to listen to them.

Time and space are indeed different when walking. Most of us are used to driving everywhere and a mile whizzes by before we know it. Or if we have to pause, we are sitting in a heated or air conditioned little chamber, listening to news or music or whatever. Everything is confined, instantaneous, of the moment. When you are walking any distance, it all changes radically. Normally I walk a mile in about 15 minutes when I'm out for exercise, but putting on a pack slows me down to about 20 minutes or maybe even a little longer on a dirt road. The vista of a mile stretches out for a long ways. Spatial concepts change. As I hike, if I'm tired, I look down at the ground more; if I'm feeling good, I'm looking up and around at where I'm headed. There's a lot to notice at a 2 - 3 mile an hour pace.

We take so much for granted when we are zipping by in a car. When I walk, I hear the wind, I hear the airplanes overhead, the vehicles coming a half mile off or more, the animal noises, children playing down the road, the rhythm of our feet walking together. There are the gradations of stone colors, the chip of blue and white stoneware in the dirt road, the litter, the washboard pattern in the dry dirt, the various wildflowers, the patches in the asphalt, the dozens of shades of green in all the different trees. There is the smell of cow manure, new mown grass, a plowed field, someone grilling dinner, the fresh dew of morning. There is the taste of that one drop of liquid nectar from yellow and white honeysuckle (do children still know how to do that?), the sweat dripping from my cheeks, the warm water out of the bottle, drops of rain hitting my arms and face. The feel of different surfaces beneath my feet, the texture of the straps of the backpack that I periodically adjust, the roughness of my shoelaces that I re-tie yet again.

Walking allows life to slow down to a more absorbable, more sensate pace. I hope that is a lot of what this journey will be about. I am so grateful for the time this week to walk with both Mary and Stella, and the times in between to smell the marshes and hear the cows moo.