Perhaps venturing out in search of some unspecified but yearned for high trail will become my final quest: a single but all consuming endeavour which may occupy me for the rest of my life. It may become the preliminary for the last walk I ever take: the cresting of the final ridge separating me from first glimpse of a destination sought since hearing and responding to a call to follow: a destination; an unknown; a growing certainty; a revelation that is both longed for and feared.
‘As a deer yearns for running streams, so I yearn for you, my God.’ (Psalms 42:1)
An absorption into a Presence, and a sense of belonging beyond not only the limits of human experience, but all possible imaginings; a return to the full awareness and shared consciousness of God walking in Eden. A walk with The One ‘who makes me as swift as a deer and sets me firmly on the heights’ (Psalms 18:33): He who has blessed me with both the ability and the longing to climb to the tree line in search of the trail.
I would have no wish to leave the trees behind save in this one necessary undertaking; I would have no reason to search for a trail above them other than to find, to see, and to descend into the welcome of the unimaginable Sanctuary to which it leads.
'... She knows only that she must go on, for he is not here, he is beyond ... nothing to be seen save the great expanse of cold, grey sea. No land in sight. She must not turn back, she cannot stand still, she must go on, must do what she cannot do for he is somewhere beyond, calling. She steps out to walk upon the waters, to go to him whom she cannot see. To do this is to be 'there' with him.
Or, can we say she walks out upon the narrow promontory reaching far out to sea? She walks to the very tip, with the grey sea all around save for the narrow strip of land linking her to the island. The waves are slowly washing away the earth behind her, cutting her off. She could leap back to safer ground. She does not; she remains looking out to sea, looking at nothing else, waiting in hope. She is borne away to him.'
(Ruth Burrows. Guidelines For Mystical Prayer)
This sense of knowing that there is still a long walk to be done is entangled with other thoughts; memories of other journeys made on foot; sights seen; sounds heard; persons walked with, met, and avoided; crossing the paths of others, especially those who were to become God’s provision through particular times.
More recently, these thoughts have been joined by my increasing awareness of two people for whom the pleasure derived from walking is no longer what it once was. The longing is there; the memories and associated trains of thought are undiminished; but the thinking, the relishing, the experiencing: the delights and invigorations of wind and rain and sun, of dawns and dusks, of bird flight and song, of tree and bush, of grass and moss and fern – of all things which combine to build the pleasures of walking – they are now, for the most part, enjoyed without the lifelong active ingredient which is the act of walking itself.
One person can no longer enjoy that physical freedom as fully or as spontaneously as he once did, and while the other still could, she too has lost the same degree of enjoyment and freedom through their ongoing commitment to shared time and the experience of life and love.
I can no longer walk or run through the woods or over the hills without taking my awareness of them with me in all that I see and hear, and feel and think. I have never been able to go there without at least some of my time being spent in my own form of wordless prayer, but in recent weeks such times have repeatedly folded and wrapped themselves around my awareness of them, carrying them and sharing with them my experience of being where they would both love to be.
Saturday 11th February was an exceptional day. I shall regret for a long time not returning home for my camera when I realized what had occurred during the night. Even before reaching the northern end of the hills I could see that something had happened; a tree high on the hillside was backlit by the sun and shone as though set with diamonds. As I climbed higher the tops of trees were all the same, and higher still whole trees were encased as though in glass, and wherever the sun shone through them they dazzled and flashed in an extraordinary way. I ran round the Herefordshire side of the British Camp, in places barely able to stand motionless until dropping down into the woods. Everything on the higher slopes was completely encased in a thick layer of flawlessly transparent ice, and as I faced into the sunshine my world was simply unreal; every spike on the gorse had its own crystal sheath; every blade and leaf and twig, and every patch of stony ground not previously covered by the protection of snow was cloaked in the same bedazzling flash and fire. Other lines from E.B.B’s Aurora Leigh ran over and over through my head:
‘... Earth’s crammed with heaven
and every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes ...’
By the time I had returned home the sun’s warmth had reduced the display to merely residual patches of light, and I had no more than memories of a rare and beautiful experience. That hurt. I had carried those same two people with me, in my thoughts and in my heart, but I had nothing to show them. I wanted to send a note or an email, or telephone, but it seemed almost cruel without being able to show anything of that morning. There are photographs to look at here http://www.geograph.org.uk/search.php?i=29345418 but they do not show what I had seen in the way that I had seen it, or in the way that I had longed for them to be able to experience it.
But that is where I went wrong, and where a part of me still goes wrong; no photographs could ever yield what I wanted them to have; that could only be received through their own direct experience of the day, and that would have meant a walk.
That is the truth at the heart of walking; and that is the loss in the heart of one who longs to walk but is no longer able to do so.
Gain and loss; strength and weakness; life and death; past, present and future; they are all bound up with the simple yet profound desire to go forth: to get out and away on foot; farther, higher and deeper: away from the world while trekking into its very heart. It is a following in answer to a call.
I have quoted the following words before (29.9.08 ... Dedication) but, on more than one level, they are too apposite to be avoided here for that reason alone.
‘... we are but faint hearted crusaders, even the walkers, now-a-days, who undertake no persevering, never-ending enterprises. Our expeditions are but tours and come round again at evening to the old hearth side from which we set out. Half the walk is but retracing our steps. We should go forth on the shortest walk, perchance, in the spirit of undying adventure, never to return; prepared to send back our embalmed hearts only, as relics to our desolate kingdoms. If you are ready to leave father and mother, and brother and sister, and wife and child and friends, and never see them again; if you have paid your debts, and made your will, and settled all your affairs, and are a free man; then you are ready for a walk.’
(Henry David Thoreau. Walking.)
