It was odd to be walking towards Canada at the start (apparently the only bridge that would allow me to leave Long Island by foot was the George Washington, located some 17 miles to the north), and yet I easily fell into an almost lazy loping gait – one that matched both the easy thoughts in my mind and the easy smile that crossed my face – and smoothly embraced the many beauties passed which I walked …

“So let us go that way, and walk on life’s highways now and allow them to put life into ourselves. And some day, after it sets in us a long time, that same life will come out of our hands and our mouths. Some of what comes forth might be wrong, of course, and yet more than enough of it will be Right. So let’s just start walking today and see the world and the way the world itself walks around and talks, the way the world really looks and the way the world really sounds. Let us go and see everything now as new. And even though none of it will be me when it goes in, and even though it won’t be perfectly mirrored when it later issues forth, after a time it will all gather together inside and it will effectively become Me. So go ahead – look at the world out there, just look at it. My God, look at it out there, outside me and inside us both, out there beyond my face and inside behind my eyes. I know that the only way to really touch it is to put it where it’s finally me, where it joins my blood, where my heart lives and pumps around a thousand times ten thousand a day. Let us go that way. Let us go and grasp life so firmly that it will never ever run off. Let us go and grasp it all and hold on to the world tight on this day. I’ve got one finger on it now already, and that’s a good beginning.” ~ inspired by Ray Bradbury

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