A Winter Walk

Henry David Thoreau advised in his journal that we should “Take long walks in stormy weather or through deep snows in the fields and woods, if you would keep your spirits up. Deal with brute nature. Be cold and hungry and weary.”

I am a fan of winter walks and I especially like going out after a snowfall. The woods are whitewashed clean, and the snow muffles sounds. I like to follow the tracks of animals who have walked there before me that day.

Adam Gopnik's book Winter: Five Windows on the Season  is a meditation on the season via artists, poets, composers, writers, explorers, scientists, and thinkers, who have created our modern idea of winter. It goes to unlikely places, such as thinking about how snow science leads to existential questions of God and our place in the world.

Do I love the winter season? No, it is my least favorite season. (Autumn is my favorite.) I often say that i want to retire to a place without winter, or at least with a much milder winter than my New Jersey ones. But I suspect i would miss winter after a time.

The Brain Pickings blog had a post about Thoreau finding inner warmth in this cold season, but here is a section from his journal that isn't about going for a walk in the snowy woods.

The wind has gently murmured through the blinds, or puffed with feathery softness against the windows, and occasionally sighed like a summer zephyr lifting the leaves along, the livelong night. The meadow-mouse has slept in his snug gallery in the sod, the owl has sat in a hollow tree in the depth of the swamp, the rabbit, the squirrel, and the fox have all been housed. The watch-dog has lain quiet on the hearth, and the cattle have stood silent in their stalls. The earth itself has slept, as it were its first, not its last sleep, save when some street-sign or wood-house door has faintly creaked upon its hinge, cheering forlorn nature at her midnight work, — the only sound awake twixt Venus and Mars, — advertising us of a remote inward warmth, a divine cheer and fellowship, where gods are met together, but where it is very bleak for men to stand. But while the earth has slumbered, all the air has been alive with feathery flakes descending, as if some northern Ceres reigned, showering her silvery grain over all the fields.

I identify with Thoreau's suggestion to walk in winter, but I also identify with curling up under a blanket inside and just observing the winter outside.

Here is Hank expanding on that winter walk:

There is nothing so sanative, so poetic, as a walk in the woods and fields even now, when I meet none abroad for pleasure. In the street and in society I am almost invariably cheap and dissipated, my life is unspeakably mean. No amount of gold or respectability would in the least redeem it, — dining with the Governor or a member of Congress!! But alone in distant woods or fields, I come to myself, I once more feel myself grandly related, and that cold and solitude are friends of mine. I suppose that this value, in my case, is equivalent to what others get by churchgoing and prayer. I thus dispose of the superfluous and see things as they are, grand and beautiful.

Poets have had much to say about winter. Mr. Shakespeare wrote:

Blow, blow, thou winter wind,
   Thou art not so unkind
      As man’s ingratitude;
   Thy tooth is not so keen,
Because thou art not seen,
      Although thy breath be rude. 

I feel more akin to the "Winter Trees" of William Carlos Williams.

All the complicated details
of the attiring and
the disattiring are completed!
A liquid moon
moves gently among
the long branches.
Thus having prepared their buds
against a sure winter
the wise trees
stand sleeping in the cold.

I'm trying to keep my own buds safe from the season and sleepily waiting for spring.

Walking Meditation

Walking meditation is a form of meditation in action. In this meditation, walking is used as our focus. We become mindful of our experience while walking, and try to keep our awareness involved with the experience of walking.

There are several different kinds of walking meditation, but I was introduced to one at a Zen monastery In Buddhism, kinhin is the walking meditation that is practiced between long periods of the sitting meditation known as zazen.

In walking meditation, we certainly keep our eyes open and are less withdrawn from the outside world - although the walking can be done indoors. In my experiences, I have walked clockwise around a room and walked outside in woods. The hands are held in shashu (one hand closed in a fist while the other hand grasps or covers the fist) and each step is taken after each full breath. I have done it at a slow pace and at a brisk pace.

The practice appealed to me for several reasons. Right off, I enjoy walking outdoors. Second, I found it appealing that we needed to be aware of things outside of ourselves. I suppose that wind, sun, trees, nature sounds and manmade sounds like airplanes and cars can be viewed as distractions, but there were plenty of distractions for me in sitting meditation. It is certainly easier on the back, neck and knees.

I found that I could easily work walking meditation into my day, from the walk from the car to my office to the walk in the park at luch or the walk in the woods after dinner.

I looked at several books on the practice, including The Long Road Turns to Joy: A Guide to Walking Meditation by Thich Nhat Hanh.

He describes the practice but also includes walking meditation poems and alternative practices. It is probably a change for many people to "walk not in order to arrive, but walk just for walking."

He recommends bare feet touching the earth as a way to better live in the here and now.

Thich Nhat Hanh

Step and breath are important to this simple practice of walking with attention and mindfulness. For some, prayer is part of the practice.

This practice is very old and not restricted to Buddhism. The term "circumambulation" means walking around a sacred object or idol. This circumambulation of temples or deity images is part of Hindu and Buddhist devotional practice (known in Sanskrit as pradakśina or pradakshinaṇā) but is also present in other religions, including Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.

There are many books on walking meditation, but it is easy enough to begin uninitiated on your own or by reading an online article. It is, however, the kind of thing that can only be learned by doing.

This is not walking to get your 10,000 steps or as exercise or to get to any place. This circular path is done with attention to the walking - your steps, your breath as the metronome setting the pace, the path ahead. And, as with almost all mediation, you try to acknowledge and then dismiss the distractions.

For my "monkey mind," this last part is the most difficult. It is hard for me in walking in the woods not to want to stop to examine a plant or stone or dismiss the water in the creek or the call of a bird.