Walking with Thoreau Again

Parked today at the Baptist Church, which has an entrance to the trails in White Clay Creek State Park on the south side of the parking lot.  Entered onto the Snow Goose Trail, heading east to start then turning south and parallel to Polly Drummond Road.  After a quarter mile the trail turns inland, westward bound.  Silence replaces the din of traffic at about the same time you reach a side trail called the Mountain Goat Trail.  It borders a deep ravine, filled with all sorts of fauna and flora, most prominent the enormous Tulip Poplar Trees, which are neither Tulips nor Poplars, but actually members of the genus Liriodendron, of the family Magnoliaceae.  I feel it’s a deprivation of their dignity to not name them as Magnolia trees, but naming rights were dispensed generations before I began wandering in these woods.

My walk took me over hills and across streams today, until I tired of the pathway and determined to find a more direct route to the other side of the forest, and ventured up a hill on a trail blazed only by deer.  Temperate air and lush breezes cooled the steep climb until I found an actual trail that led to a deeper and more primitive part of the woods.  Returning home after 3 or 4 miles, I resumed reading Thoreau’s essay Walking, and was stopped in my spiritual tracks by this Thoreauvian scripture:

“What is it that makes it so hard sometimes to determine whither we will walk? I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright. It is not indifferent to us which way we walk. There is a right way; but we are very liable from heedlessness and stupidity to take the wrong one. We would fain take that walk, never yet taken by us through this actual world, which is perfectly symbolical of the path which we love to travel in the interior and ideal world; and sometimes, no doubt, we find it difficult to choose our direction, because it does not yet exist distinctly in our idea.”

As an adverb the word fain, archaic to our ears, means “with pleasure.”  Try reading the sentence beginning with “We would fain…” through to the end of the paragraph, slowly a few times.  Perhaps you can apply this to your own life.

My walk today was simply a saunter, as Thoreau uses the word: wandering to our own Holy Land, a land found within our hearts and spirits.  I meandered a bit, following an intuition honed by countless times in these forests, in a way that I suppose was quite symbolical of the path which I love to travel within my interior world.  Yet I find it becoming easier to choose my direction, as my direction seems to be becoming clearer every day.

I have come to love my retirement.  Rather than seeing these years as a time to withdraw into leisure activities, I have experienced more of the 16th century meaning of the word: a time of comparative solitude, as on spiritual retreat.  Maybe it’s all the meditation, or perhaps all the time spent counseling and teaching, but I feel more confident each day that my direction is well chosen, and that my forest walks reflect my interior world.  Walking, for me, is a blessing.  Everyday walking is secular; that is, taking a pathway among our current society and culture.  Forest walking is sacred: that is, wandering ground that is hallowed, that sanctifies.  I believe that a sacred space exists for each of us to walk, but for most of our lives we are consumed, necessarily, by the secular, by the demands to provide food, shelter, clothing and all the material needs for survival.  To find time to retire, step back and walk with sacred intent, is difficult.  But those times are, I believe, when we are at our best, and worth much sacrifice.