This essay was inspiried by reading this:
“In today’s twitter-centred terms, ‘ Exits to Edinburgh’ could be described as a hashtag that walkers used to refer to the type of walk I guided: one which would meet at Edinburgh castle, choose a location at the periphery of the city, and then walk an unplanned route in order to reach that location. A fourth stage might include sharing our creative responses to the walk afterwards.”
Lusa Bhuí
The walks I make have a beginning and an end, but I get lost in-between. I ‘lose myself’ in my thoughts and sensations, I ‘miss’ the signs and ‘find’ myself somewhere else. I start out with an intention, a stone in my hand perhaps, and I end up with a living plan(t) inside.
Having discarded the prompt-stone at a prominent juncture, it has served its purpose, I have turned towards a new East. (Did I take a ‘wrong’ turn?) I ended up who-knows-where in my quest.
What was related, tangentially, to what I started with, has metamorphosised and ‘become’. Appeared. Taken shape.
I walk
I notice
it reminds me of
that connects with
and before I know it I am in a new here
I feel the thrill, I recognise it has to be done, followed through with, communicated.
Then my task is to ‘find’ my way back to the path and continue until I arrive at a place of safety for the night.
I sleep on it, like a mattress of new endeavours under which is a pea that cannot be ignored. It sprouts while I dream. In the morning, I discover that my subconscious has fertilised that small plant and when I step out again onto the continuation of that route the next day, it leads me somewhere else and the shoot inside continues to grow with the next set of new.
‘The pathways get stronger with repetition until the behavior is the new normal.‘
Health Transformer
If I go ‘my way’, take the “unplanned route to reach the periphery” (which by its nature is just outside my forward-seeing vision), there I am in an unfamiliar “location”, the sort which contains new possibilities. New neural tracks are trodden and remembered, forging unexpected links which lead me in directions not previously imagined.
‘and like many of them he ceased to be lost not by returning but by turning into something else.”
Rebecca Solnit
And on I walk.
Walking without a donkey 