Soul Stroll

walkthinking with muses

Walking my dog, the most estimable Birdeetra “Birdie” Donohue, has become a favorite daily ritual of mine. As someone whose schedule has never lent itself to many consistent rituals, I tend to latch on to the ones that work. And as someone who doesn’t typically follow-through with a ton of consistency anyway, these rituals may only last for a short time. Nevertheless, for right now, this daily walk has become a most treasured part of my life.

Back in February, when Birdie came into my orbit, we could walk any time of day. Morning was great because we would get it out of the way early. Afternoon worked well because it was a nice way to break up the day and get us both moving. Evenings were also lovely because it was a fine way to wind down. Now that it is summer and I live in the sauna known as Georgia, our walks must be done early in the day. Any attempted walking after 9 a.m. leads to great suffering. Both of the human and canine variety.

The push for getting out the door early has made this ritual a little more…ritualistic. Upon waking, around 7 or 8 depending on the needs of the day, I fill out my 5-minute journal. This is one daily practice that seems to have stuck given that I’ve done it religiously for about 2 years and am currently on my 4th physical journal. Maybe it's the routine that provides a springboard for all the other routines?

After a few minutes of journaling, I make my bed. This might not seem like a big accomplishment but seeing as I’m uncharacteristically meticulous about how the bed gets made, doing it consistently and with gusto is worth noting. Without exaggeration it takes a solid 7-10 minutes (I have a problematic amount of pillows), hence why I’m not always eager. Lately I’ve been very regular with this chore because I’ve implemented a new rule: no looking at my phone until the bed is done. It’s been a game changer. Feel free to use.

After some basic grooming, just in case I see other humanoids on our walk, and a little hydration, I throw on my shoes. I wear the same pair every day and Birdie now recognizes them as Dad’s Walking Shoes. With much excitement, she and I hit the road.

And I do mean hit the road. My house sits on a very busy street. It’s a direct cut-through between two giant thoroughfares and gets heavy usage. There’s no stop sign or traffic light or speed bump to be found. People treat it like a highway. I abhor the fact that folks drive approximately 70 mph down this small neighborhood road like it’s the autobahn but such is life. Birdie and I hug the inside of the sidewalk and try not to think about getting smushed.

After half a block of dodging vehicular death, we turn into paradise - East Village Park. This quiet hamlet was built around 2005 and consists of 75 homes or so by my estimate. Usually I dislike anything resembling suburbia. That chip on my shoulder is deeply rooted in growing up as St. Louis south city trash. Nevertheless East Village Park is something special, even if it is a bubble of suburbia in the middle of a bustling city.

Upon entering the subdivision, I find I’m still on high alert from the harrowing bit of street we survived. My mind vibrates. There’s a tension, annoyance, and kinetic energy that takes a while to mellow out. It doesn’t help that Birdie has the most energy at this point of our walk. Her aggressive stop-and-sniff approach furthers my frustration and makes me impatient to get moving. It’s usually here that I have to remind myself why we’re walking - for her. It’s in her nature to stop and smell. It is, after all, how she knows the world. I don’t wish to train that out of her.*

With each passing house, I begin to relax and take in new details. Whoever developed this subdivision did a good job (in my largely uneducated opinion). While there’s certainly a common aesthetic, each house is unique. The homes are large but not extravagant. Most are 2 or 3 stories with pitched roofs. Many have deep porches with hanging plants, swings, and ceiling fans. Some have enviable second-story porches. The hedge game at most addresses is quite good. Many of the houses have a brick/siding combination for the facade with pops of blue, slate, red, beige, black, and white. A silent labyrinth of alleyways behind the houses means there are few visible driveways and only a smattering of cars parked on the road.

Birdie eventually relaxes into an even tempo. The excitement of being outside and smelling all of absolutely everything wanes as the hard physical work of walking this hilly subdivision takes over. We enter an even, yet slow, cadence and my mind begins to clear. The chaos of the death-defying highway becomes a distant memory while my thoughts unfurl. The ping pong tournament in my head gets replaced with something slower. Golf perhaps. Maybe checkers. We’re about a third of the way into our walk.

In the first few months of walking with Birdie I would listen to podcasts or audiobooks.** At first I loved the distraction. I could zone out while ingesting someone else’s ideas and words. One of my 6 or 7 podcasts in regular rotation would fill the crevasses of my mind. I outsourced thinking and went along for the ride.

About a month ago, I got a wild hair to forgo headphones. I left the house with my phone zipped in my pocket. Birdie and I went through East Village Park while I had nothing in my ears. I had no digital connection to the outside world. All I could access was the sound of Birdie’s paws on the pavement and silence.

This changed everything.

At first I had some anxiety. Mild panic was an odd reaction to not having someone else’s supplanted thoughts bouncing in my head. There were no distractions. It was quiet, a distinct absence. After a while though I found myself…thinking. It might sound glib but I was dumbfounded. I was doing my very own thinking. Something about it felt revolutionary. The thoughts in my brain seemed to slow down. I could follow a line of thought to its conclusive end then move on to the next thing. It was very different than the frantic, multitasking, berserk, text-to-email-to-instagram-to-weather-app-back-to-text treadmill of chatter that dominates my headspace most of the day. It was deep thinking.

I’ve been hooked ever since. This practice of distraction-free walking has opened up new spaces in me. I can breathe in the world on these walks much the way Birdie physically breathes in the world. I am deeply engaged in my inner life in a new way. It’s similar to meditation, a pool I’ve dipped my toe in many times, with some key differences. My understanding of meditation is to let go of my attachment to thoughts, to see them float by “like a rowboat with no oar on a gentle stream.” But my walking-thinking has me wrestling with thoughts. I dance with them and spar with them. We sit together and laugh. We’re in conversation and communion. There’s an engagement that has the pace of meditation but with sweat. It’s active. I love it.

These walks have become the only place in my life completely devoted to thinking. Nowhere else does this happen. Even my writing practice, full of its contemplation and complicated ideas, has an objective - get something written. It’s not unencumbered or untethered. It’s encumbered with a final product on the horizon. My walkthinking is Scarecrow-gets-his-brain type thinking. It’s free. It’s majestic.

The great irony is that this objective-free, deep, meandering style of thinking has been the most productive of my life, at least creatively speaking. During the last month of walkthinking I’ve fleshed out what I believe will be my next big creative project. A small kernel of an idea has compounded and grown every day. Instead of sitting down to bang out words on a page and hope the ideas follow, I’m building an entire project in my head with almost no effort. I’m not grinding away at generation. I’m simply putting one foot in front of the other, quite literally, and generation soon follows. It’s been a magical and unforeseen side effect of walking my dog.

As Birdie and I make our way back toward the autobahn and exit East Village Park, I slowly come back down to “real life.” The dreamy headspace of creativity and hydrangeas gets replaced with to-do lists and all the practicalities of keeping oneself alive. Even the generative space of creating “the next big thing” gets swapped for thoughts of how difficult it will be to produce, how much money it will cost, etc. I start getting a little anxious about future problems.

Birdie’s gait slows down, either from exhaustion or unwillingness to be done walking, and I’m reminded that it’s well within my power to continue this state as far into my day as possible. I can allow habits and patterns to override the system or I can offer myself an alternative. There’s some element of choice here. In either case, I enter the house sweaty, renewed, and alive. All for the low price of an hourlong stroll with my dog.

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*Don’t come for me, dog people!

**When I say audiobooks here I mean audiobook. The only one I listened to was Jane Eyre. It was a bookclub pick and I was struggling to get through the hardcopy. Luckily there is a brilliant recording by Thandiwe Newton that I highly recommend.