The last weeks have been walking weeks. Days of exploring different places far away and around where I live. It began earlier in Berlin, Germany and now it has taken me from the shoreline of Long Island Sound to Brooklyn, from Croton Dam to my back yard. I enjoy these walks and now I even try to walk to shops which I thought before beyond reach. Sometimes I have a friend with me, but often I enjoy it all by myself. It takes me from a few minutes to sometimes a few hours.
Walking is not so common around here. The world is set up for driving, there are only a few sidewalks where I live and I have a feeling most people think of it as a sport...which I do not!
I'd rather see myself in the tradition of Goethe and Schiller, H.D.Thoreau, William Wordsworth or the Alcott's for whom walking was, apart from necessity, a way to feel nature and source of inspiration, meditation and romantic love.
I remember long Sunday walks with my parents and sisters, through summer warm valleys, along rivers, snow laden fields or cool forests. Walking was natural and not something we thought of as a chore.
My children miss this almost entirely. They consider it boring. Or - after sports (!) and homework are too tired to go on walks.
Walking lets me think, I can sort ideas, make plans, I dream and of course I can stop and watch. Something I love to do! I watch nature, animals, my fellow humans, I walk through the largest picture book and it does not tire me in the least.
I love the water.
And the light.
I watch crumbling houses and smart cats.
The power of water.
Old trees and older stone walls make me feel young and childlike.
But the sky lets me breath and makes me hopeful.
I am grounded.
The immeasurable height
Of woods decaying, never to be decayed,
The stationary blast of waterfalls,
And everywhere along the hollow rent
Winds thwarting winds, bewildered and forlorn,
The torrents shooting from the clear blue sky,
The rocks that muttered close to our ears,
Black drizzling crags that spoke by the wayside
As if a voice were in them, the sick sight
And giddy prospect of a raving stream,
The unfettered clouds and region of the heavens,
Tumult and peace, the darkness and the light -
Were all like workings of the mind, the features
Of the same face, blossoms upon one tree,
Characters of great apocalypse,
The types and symbols of eternity,
Of first and last, and midst, and without end.
Prelude(1805), vi, 556 -72
William Wordsworth.
No need for anything more! There is no distance between his feelings and mine, there is a bridge of time, I wander back and forth two hundred and six years!
All images by V.Zlotkowski
