small things: healing through walking

“Exploring the world is one of the best ways of exploring the mind and walking travels both terrains.” 

― Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking

Lately we've been feeling a little trapped. The news cycle grows ever more intense and anxiety-inducing as it grows colder; election season and Brexit and the growing death rate invade our waking moments (and even our sleeping ones).

Doomscrolling

The best antidote for this tightening spiral is going for a ramble. Put on that mask and get some fresh air.

We immerse ourselves in the sights and sounds of our neighbourhood. We explore side streets we formerly ignored on our way home from work, in that faraway time.

We relish the glowing pink of roses as the sun creeps lower in the sky.

In the autumn light we pick out unusual colours and shading, our gaze arrested by a royal flush of petals.

Even smaller blooms are precious now that we can feel the October wind on the horizon. 

Most of our neighbourhood is still summer-coloured, but the fall foliage begins to show.

Blossoms turn to berries on the vine - bright colours fade into ripening fruits, an old story of the passing seasons.

When we start to feel bitter about the state of the world and angry at our unmet fellow humans, sometimes a message appears to brighten our view. As always, art can soothe our savaged hearts.

Children's chalk drawings in bright colours remind us of new artists still growing in these withering times. A beautiful, surprising flourish on a blank wall reveals a master calligrapher with a message of tenderness for our battered souls.

"I wish I could show you, when you are lonely or in darkness,
the astonishing light of your own being." Calligrapher Seb Lester

Even outside our own windows, if we only look up from our screens, we're greeted by the neighbours who nest in our trees and bring a breath of fairytale into our mundane city lives.

We wish all our fellow humans the gift of wandering, green growing things, and art. And of course, world peace! Or just...peace.

"While walking I am but a simple gaze.” ― Frederick Gros, A Philosophy of Walking