The forgotten art of walking...
After sitting in my little tukul almost all day on Saturday I had enough. I needed to get out and so I went for a walk. And once I started walking I was overcome by the strangest urge to just keep on walking. I mean, just keep going.
Now, I’m the person who coined the phrase, ‘if God had intended us to walk he wouldn’t have given us cars’ so I’m not normally a fan of ‘footing’, as they call it here. I think of walking as a means to an end, just like driving - only the latter is more expedient. You walk, or run, or hike, or trek, or drive in order to 1) get where you’re going, or 2) exercise, or, 3) see some beautiful mountain/hike as the case may be. That’s it. I have never gotten some high or endorphine rush from either walking or running.
That’s why I found it so unusual that on Saturday I just felt like walking. It might have something to do with being in the middle of nowhere and I was on a dirt track that goes somewhere. It wasn’t to get anywhere, it wasn’t particularly beautiful, and (given my deficit of caloric intake recently) it was certainly not about exercise. But I had this compulsion to follow it as far as it went. I’m sure some psychologist could explain it as a desire to escape from the work on my desk that I had no desire to complete. And I would be lying if I said that I didn’t have about fourteen different security scenarios passing immediately through my head – most of which ended with me passed out from dehydration while my bones were being picked clean by vultures. Hence, after about half an hour I did decided to turn around but I have to admit there was something wonderful about putting your feet on a straight dirt path and walking.
Now, I’m the person who coined the phrase, ‘if God had intended us to walk he wouldn’t have given us cars’ so I’m not normally a fan of ‘footing’, as they call it here. I think of walking as a means to an end, just like driving - only the latter is more expedient. You walk, or run, or hike, or trek, or drive in order to 1) get where you’re going, or 2) exercise, or, 3) see some beautiful mountain/hike as the case may be. That’s it. I have never gotten some high or endorphine rush from either walking or running.
That’s why I found it so unusual that on Saturday I just felt like walking. It might have something to do with being in the middle of nowhere and I was on a dirt track that goes somewhere. It wasn’t to get anywhere, it wasn’t particularly beautiful, and (given my deficit of caloric intake recently) it was certainly not about exercise. But I had this compulsion to follow it as far as it went. I’m sure some psychologist could explain it as a desire to escape from the work on my desk that I had no desire to complete. And I would be lying if I said that I didn’t have about fourteen different security scenarios passing immediately through my head – most of which ended with me passed out from dehydration while my bones were being picked clean by vultures. Hence, after about half an hour I did decided to turn around but I have to admit there was something wonderful about putting your feet on a straight dirt path and walking.
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