“At times during any Peace Pilgrimage, you become almost certain that you ascended this same hillside three days ago, crossed this same stream yesterday, clambered over this same fallen tree at least twice that same day already. And yet most of the time you don’t think at all. Instead, you exist in a kind of mobile Zen mode, with your steps simultaneously tethered to your brain and your heart like a balloon on a string — accompanying the journey but not actually part of the body below; caring deeply for each & every other encountered but not in any way attached to an outcome of the same. Walking for hours and days and miles and miles becomes as automatic and as unremarkable as breathing; as automatic and choiceless as lending a dear friend a helping hand. And because of this, at the end of every day you don’t think, ‘Hey, I did twenty six miles today,’ any more than you think, ‘Hey, I took eight-thousand breaths today.’ It’s just what you do — and you simply do it.” ~ inspired by Bill Bryson

Filed under: Peace Pilgrimage #02: Walking HOME (2019) by Scaughdt