Paths to Presence and Peace

I have been a walker from way back. I was first introduced to the delights of walking by my grandfather when I was a child. Every time he visited, he and I found a moment to slip away to the large field a block away from the house where I grew up in Hershey, Pennsylvania.

When I was very young, the field was home to a herd of black-and-white cows, and the huge barn in the corner stored cocoa beans: the two chief ingredients of our town's famous milk chocolate right there at the end of the street. Eventually the cows moved on, and the barn was transformed into an antique shop.

I recall the Christmas that the field's stream flooded and froze, and my sisters and I ice-skated there; and the August night we lay in the grass by the barn and watched a meteor shower. But most of all, I remember the walks in that field with my grandfather.

Each venture brought a new discovery: brilliant summer sunsets; a pheasant hiding among the corn stalks one fall; winter's crystal ice formations; a carpet of wild violets and a duck's nest full of eggs in spring. By high school, my walks in the field were solitary. I went there almost daily, to think and listen and plot my destiny.

In college, I continued the ritual in a different setting. I discovered a large, old cemetery a few blocks from my campus in Maine, on a hill overlooking the Androscoggin River. Since snow visited Maine from October to April, most of my memories are of trudging through a deep blanket of white. The snow laid a hush on the earth, and once I passed through the cemetery's creaking, ancient gate, I was enveloped with quiet among the tall pine trees.

WITH 16 YEARS of city living came a loss of the sense of solitude and delight that I always drew from walking. Its recovery is one of the greatest gifts of my temporary rural North Carolina retreat. I have tried to get out in the mountain air every day; but in particular a long walk has become my Sunday-morning ritual.

I follow the sounds. Last Sunday morning began with a loud, hammering commotion among the pine trees along the road. I searched intently until I noticed the bright red crest of a huge woodpecker, in search of its breakfast among the high branches. Beyond the first bend is a small farm, where smoke curls lazily out of the chimney of a cozy, white-frame house. The four horses who graze in the field--one white, one tan, one bay, one black--ambled over to the fence to greet me, the first to see me calling to the others with a spirited neigh.

At the foot of the hill, the strains of a piano playing an old-time hymn drifted out from the Little Cove Baptist Church. I followed a murmuring stream past the church toward the incessant call of roosters and was reminded of Nicaragua, where I heard roosters crow all day long. These were a colorful variety, with bands of red, black, brown, and yellow that glowed with an iridescent shine in the bright sunlight. Each rooster was standing on the roof of his tiny A-frame house, about a hundred in all. (My awe at the sight was marred later by the knowledge that these are gamecocks, destined to be taken across the line to South Carolina where it is legal to allow them to fight one another.)

I discovered three caterpillars on the return trip, striped brown and black, thick and woolly--indicators, I am told by mountain folk, that a rough winter lies ahead. A pair of the town's unusual white squirrels chattered to one another in the trees, now almost bare of leaves. I found what I imagined to be the last living wildflowers in the county--a tiny clump of goldenrod among some ivy.

This time of walking is prayer for me. It is easy to be grateful for all God's gifts while walking among the glories of creation. It is also a time of bringing to mind the people and places in need of intercession.

This is not a new discovery, of course. People have known for centuries the prayerful power of walking. Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Buddhist monk, wrote in A Guide to Walking Meditation, published by the Fellowship of Reconciliation:

Scented paths across rice fields, shady bamboo-lined dirt roads, parks covered with dry leaves--these are your paths for walking meditation; please enjoy them. They should not lead you to forgetfulness, but should bring you the necessary mindfulness so that you can see the real dramas of the world. Then every path, every street--from the back alleys of Beirut to the roads of Vietnam where mines still explode and take the lives of children and farmers--every path in the world is your walking meditation path. Once you are awake, you will not hesitate to enter those paths.

The paths beckon--wherever you are, wherever you are going. They offer an invitation to presence and peace.

Joyce Hollyday was associate editor of Sojourners when this article appeared.