Unpacked: A Walker Returns Home

I went jogging in the rain today.

It was a refreshing jog, much overdue after quite a long time without exercise.

A point about jogging:
When I was a teenager, I went on a few jogs with my dad. He has run marathons before, and gets a lot of satisfaction out of jogging. I never really got it. I grew up playing fast-paced sports- hockey, football, etc. Jogging was slow. It was, how do I say…boring.

That was a number of years ago. Now, my only issue with jogging is that it is too fast.

I’d like not to think that my problem is that at 25 I’m already an old man. I think I just fell in love with walking. Since returning from our walk, jogging has become this action packed, high impact, adrenaline-pumping sport, with time passing before I’ve yet to realize that time’s almost up.

Which brings me to my topic of the day- Speed. Everything in civilization seems to happen really fast. Cars, fast food, microwaves. Speed becomes the expectation. Take the Internet, for example. I find myself yelling at my computer like it’s a bad dog if an Internet page takes more than a split second to load.

Another point about jogging; specifically about my jog today. Like I said, it was raining. The rain was great. Cold and refreshing. The best part about the rain was that it was only raining outside. A roof and a hot shower warmly awaited my return home.

Much of our trek was in Ireland, Scotland and the state of Washington. Not to throw a climatology term at you, but Ireland, Scotland and Washington are “very wet.” In these areas, the weather report does not read “The weather for today is…,” but rather “The rain for today will be…” It is not a question of will it rain, but rather, how much? It’s not a joke. We were in Washington for six weeks. We had literally one completely clear day.

So needless to say, we did lots of walking in the rain. We had pretty good rain gear, but eventually, a mix of the non-stop wet from outside and our sweat soaking us from the inside turn us into a wet, cold, moldy mess. On-trail in the middle of the backcountry, we usually were miles from a roof and hot shower. In a way, the whole experience was sort of miserable.

But here’s a funny thing about the misery. Because our goal was so far out of sight, there wasn’t that much to look forward to. So we just walked. Usually, we barely ate, too, because we were too cold to stop. But we walked. Fascinatingly enough, especially because we were so far from the goal of getting inside, the mushy mess of wet and mold and coldness that was us became very beautiful and astonishingly enjoyable.

The reason I bring all of this up is because an obvious reason to favor speed in the city, is due to needing to get something done. If my eyes are fixed on a goal, then I will try to make the path to the goal as quick as possible.

Now don’t get me wrong: Goals are great. In the city and in the wilderness. On the trail, we had goals of where to get to. But because we were going so slowly, it was hard- even depressing, to only focus on the goal. That was a gift of hiking- moving so slowly that even if we were goal-oriented, we had time-enough to figure out how to enjoy the way there.

Upon returning home, Chana and I bought a car. For me to pretend not to value speed or driving or even “getting there” would be dishonest. But my hope for our return to civilization, is that even if sometimes I run, even if sometimes I want to get somewhere fast- I hope that I take this gift of walking with me- the gift that it’s tragic to value a goal without enjoying the way there. ‘Cause sometimes, I don’t get there. And the crazy thing is that even if I do get there- I only “get there” for a split second. After that, I’m just there.

And before I know it, I’m busy going somewhere else. So in the end, most of my time is spent on the way. Sure seems like my goal shouldn’t just be arriving at my goal- but rather, arriving at the way to my goal, as well.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, January 13th, 2008 at 9:02 am and is filed under Challenges of the City, Speed. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.