Tag: inspiration

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, 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) for the future inside me.

Having discarded the prompt-stone at a prominent juncture (it has served its purpose) I turn in a new direction, towards a new East. I may go wrong in the process and end up who-knows-where in my quest, which has no name until afterwards.

What was related, tangentially, to what I started with, is metamorphosing and becoming. It appears little by little, takes shape as I move. 

When I go my own way like this, take the “unplanned route to reach the periphery” (which by its nature is just outside my forward-seeing vision), I find myself in an unfamiliar location, a place which contains new possibilities. In my brain, new neural tracks are trodden and remembered, in my mind unexpected links are forged which lead me in directions not previously imagined.

I feel the thrill. I recognise it has to be done, followed through with and, later, communicated.

Once lost, and noticing that the daylight is fading, my task is to find my way back to a path and continue until I arrive at a place of safety for the night.

‘The pathways get stronger with repetition until the behavior is the new normal.‘

Health Transformer

I sleep on it, like a mattress of new endeavours under which is a pea that cannot be ignored. The pea 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 experiences and meetings. 

‘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.