How I Learned to Stop Walking and Just Be

I have written a lot about walking. It’s how I decompress. And how I exercise. When I walk in my neighborhood, I sometimes head to a north/south street called Las Brisas. It has no outlets. There are cul-de-sacs at either end of its long, dark, tree-lined blacktop. I walk undisturbed in the middle of the road. One night last week I was out for a walk with Beau. I had reached Las Brisas and was going north, downhill, and thinking.

Las Brisas looking north. Beau's in the shadows to the left. 

Walking along I realized that I was dwelling on bad things. I was hurting in my chest and abdomen. My job was presenting some stressful situations. My wi-fi wasn’t working…. The typical stuff we all deal with was in the way of my walk.

I stopped and stood still on the road. There were no cars. The moonless sky was dark and clear. A cool front had blown through and the air was crisp. As the moments passed I became aware that I needed to be present in their beauty, not missing them because I was mulling over my hurts and concerns. I needed to be thankful for my ability to be outside, and walking.

Honestly, it wasn’t so long ago that the best walk I could take was the eighty-three steps around the nurses’ station at MD Anderson, passing under fluorescent lights and across alternating shades of green and gray tile. Being outside, under the stars, walking on a dark street with Beau was so much better, with so many more pleasant things to think about, that there was really no comparison.

Consciously, I began to appreciate the walk more.

Beau was in the woods on my right side, the east side of the road. He is built low, maybe 12 inches tall, 30 inches long, and 10 inches wide, and he has big paws that flop around when he walks. His short, domesticated steps make a racket in the brush to stir the dead. He would certainly starve if left to kill for food. If I could hear him so clearly with my human ears, a wiley rabbit would be watching him from the safety of a thicket long before Beau’s snout even picked up his rabbity scent.

But in this case, his thrashing in the undergrowth made me pause. As I silently appreciated the fact that I was there at all, I suddenly realized I had been missing the things I heard too. So I decided to systematically step through each of my five senses, paying attention to what I was hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling, and seeing. 

I breathed deeply and heard the air pass through my nose and into my lungs. My troubled thoughts slowly became past tense, and I began to pick out each, discernible sound track of the night.

While it was cold, there was still some little living thing in the bushes singing for mates. It’s amazing that night calls in Texas are so pervasive and omni-seasonal that there is hardly ever a truly, silent night. Always, the click and hum of life surrounds us.

Above me, the cold breeze moved through the trees and across my skull cap. It shushed past, branch on branch, leaf on leaf, murmuring and whispering with indescribable sounds. Wind is as wind does. It screeches. It moans. It whispers. I heard it there above me. I drank it in, and imagined what made the sounds from its passing.

Air poured through my nose and down the back of my tongue as I inhaled the cool night's tastes and smells--the dense cedar fragrance of hill country and neighborhood run-offs; the tangled aroma of wood and bare brush and decaying, brown oak leaves; lingering mountain laurel and rosemary; the familiar smell of a wood-burning fireplace.

My fingers were cold. The thick barrel of the big, black police flashlight I carry sat in the curve of my hand, buried in the pocket of my old Carhartt, its scored surface and rubber push-button switch familiar. My other hand clenched in my left pocket. I felt my finger pads in my palm, and it was warm.

I explored the feelings of my face. We are normally not aware of how our faces feel. They generally are a one-way message out from us, “I’m busy. I’m stressed. I’m happy. I’m sad.” But when I paid attention, my face was letting me know the air was cold and my hat was tight and warm. My ears bristled as the cold breeze swirled in them. My cheeks couldn’t decide whether to be cold or hot, and so teetered on both sensations from the corners of my mouth to the sides of my eyes. The cold on my forehead stopped where my black hat started. Below that line, I could feel coolness tingling, above it, the pressure of elastic.

When I paused to concentrate on my legs I regretted not wearing my long underwear. But my feet, ah! my feet were toasty warm in my new boots from Mac, my father-in-law. Taking steps now, I could feel my weight and the scrape of their soles on the asphalt, and I knew I was going down a hill without even being able to see the slope.

Darkness enveloped me. There are no lights on Las Brisas, and the house porch lights sit back by 50 to 100 feet. I have been on Las Brisas when it’s so dark you can’t see your hand in front of your face. This night was not that dark, but only starlights pin pricked the sky. There was no moonlight filtering through the woods on either side of me. Branches above me were coarse, dark brushwork on a deep blue canvas. The white curbs of the black road were only notions of a border.

Beau came out of the woods and found me. I knelt down on one knee and scratched his neck in the deep folds. He looked up. I looked down. We made a visual connection, imprinting that we were two in a pack, safe, no danger. Off he went, and me too, further on our explorations.

Lights from a home I had never appreciated before shone through the bare undergrowth. It sits twenty feet higher than the street on a carved-out hillside to my left. Party lights swayed over a large, Spanish courtyard above me, encircled by a low stone wall. I imagined a bustling party there: waiters with trays of drinks and hor d’oeurvres held shoulder high, and I wanted to be standing in a clutch of friends, sipping a margarita with salt and laughing at long-known insider jokes.

I circled the cul de sac and began to walk back up the hill. I was so far from where I started. Quiet. I was struck with the word "Be." "Be. Be. Be....." I breathed it in.

Be. Where you are, Wade.
Be. With who you're with.
Be. And don't miss the joy of being.

Yes, there are unpleasant things that I and everyone else must deal with. They are the facts of life. But not the only ones!

There are spikes of pain in our lives that pinch and crimp and wake us up. We all face demons at work, whether in an office or an SUV. Each of us has daily opportunities to mull our injuries and pet peeves, nursing them into brimming wards of 24-hour-care patients.

But stop. Hang on. Don’t do that. You don’t have to. We can do something else.

Spend time being without those hurts. Invest your observation power by walking through your senses one at a time. Find yourself in places that are rewarding—the woods, a basketball game, a lake, a dinner table. Dwell on hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling, and seeing. Soak up the cold, the hot, the sounds, sights, feelings—the sensations of life. Absorb each as a chorus and then in their individual voices. 

Beaches become so much more than broad strokes of sand, sky, water and bodies; forests, more than trees, dirt, stones and trails; roads, more than the fastest way from one thing to the next; people, more precious; time, more rich, and maybe even a little slower.