if a story is a new path through the terrain of the imagination, to read is to walk over that path with the author as a guide.

what happens though if that guide has perhaps a general sense of direction but does not choose to follow a clearly defined route? you may explore. you may wander. indeed, you may get lost.

here’s an invitation. walk with me, wander with me, while we get lost within the forest of my thoughts on this page.

with my early retirement from academia, I find myself on an existential adventure. I find myself living as an accidental artist in residence in the English Lake District.

the solitary long distance walk I did over the summer was prompted by a strong desire to rid myself of the pressures and pulls of social relations and social structures that I at times feel directing my body, my behaviour.

the push towards walking here in England, conversely, was to help find my place within exactly those.

Rebecca Solnit writes - walking, ideally, is a state in which the mind, the body, and the land are aligned … three notes suddenly making a chord.

while walking, in my experience, body and mind indeed find convergence. additionally, the walk positions me at a distance from the social, a momentary extraction of myself from society, whilst remaining connected to place as I constantly orient myself against geographical space. it thereby allows for a triangulation that helps me contemplate my place in it all.

when walking alone I experience autonomy, agency that is under pressure in the face of social relationships and social structures. walking allows me to cultivate autonomy as well as contemplate that dynamic.

after the move to the Lake District I take time finding my feet. after the move I find myself at the end of the clearly defined path. now it is down to my sense of direction. the clearing, however, gives rise to a growth of internalized social schemes that have traditionally directed my body, my behaviour. this tension causes me to ruminate. in Dutch: piekeren.

retracing my steps to the last place where I found peace, I resort to walking. a standing longing to find a gateway through art, to understand and self-express, I simultaneously endeavor to explore the act of walking as an artform. indeed, the walk itself becomes such an important pursuit that I experience it almost as art in and of itself. piekerenbecomes a metaphor for my commitment to at least one long day out each week. A day that I centralized around one particular peak. In Dutch: piek.

individual meaning emerges through my interaction with the peaks. the fells become my friends. I constantly orient myself, name the peaks I can see against the horizon, lay out the puzzle of the Lake District. it helps to give me a sense of purpose, it helps me form a social relationship with the land, it helps me find belonging. if I know this place, I have a place in it.

when trying to, however, I cannot seem to find any point, or greater beauty, in the act of walking up different peaks - other than the individual meaning it provides me with. the meaning of walking up a mountain fragments.

just like how coming up close, the objective form of a mountain seems to dissolve into subjective experience. instead of seeing the mountain, I see the distance left to get to the top, I see the type of terrain and the effort it requires. and so, just like the zen proverb:

“before the walk mountains were only mountains; during the walk mountains were no longer mountains, and after the walk mountains were again mountains.”

what then, has the triangle of kiek / piek \ social shown me? perhaps that celebrating the walk’s lack of tangible meaning is exactly the act of resistance that enables me to peel off the social layers ascribed to my body whilst walking.

as Simon(e) van Saarloos writes - we cherish the ideal of direction, of moving forward, because it means we progress, we gain, which in turn means we have something to lose. And perhaps the sense of having something to lose is necessary, because the act of walking itself costs energy. energy that seems less wasted when it is used to prevent a loss. without direction what’s left is only the act of walking itself.

I choose, however, to embrace the worth inherent in the walk. the worth of the movement that, whilst directing me forward, invites me inward.

 and while the peaks have helped me find belonging, it is within me that I find home.