Walking and Wandering

How does the kind of walking we do relate to the seasons of our lives?

Greetings on this rainy summer solstice!

My first sunflower bloomed yesterday just in time to greet the day on the longest day of the year today!

First sunflower in the garden with two buds promising more blooms.

Things have been a bit quiet here at the newsletter as days have been full with events and celebrations. My youngest graduated from high school two weeks ago so we’ve spent time gathered with family and friends to celebrate.

Hosting family visitors, birthday celebrations, and a graduation celebration meant that there were lots of deadlines I needed to meet to be present to the events of the season. I chose to give myself some grace with the newsletter deadline.

Graduation season offered a chance to continue to reflect on different kinds of walking and particularly on walking as ritual in community.

Graduation is a formal ceremony complete with special dress and insignia. It is a chance for the community that supports students to witness and celebrate their learning and growth. The completion of schooling and the conference of a degree happens with or without the walk. However, symbolically, it is the walk that matters.

We went out to lunch after the ceremony; I saw families with graduates still wearing their robes, extending the visibility and celebration into the broader community. This continued the next day when my son and fellow graduates visited their elementary school in cap and gown to talk to the sixth graders about middle and high school.

Walking across the practice field at West Potomac High School after graduation.

Rituals and traditions mark changes and transitions; the graduation walk is a great example of this. I am grateful for the celebrations, and a bit weary from the excitement of such full days. I am sitting with the emotions around transitions and changes they bring for my family. After a season of celebration, I am ready for some aimless wandering.

In my creative life, I have been doing just that. Experimenting with new crochet patterns, working puzzles, drawing labyrinths, gardening; I’ve been generally taking time to play and experiment and notice.

I’m especially grateful for the natural world in this seasion, for the abundance of growth and change that greets me each day.

Scenes from the garden and forest the past month.

Widdershins

Researching walking practices for my book, I came across a new word. The word is widdershins, it’s a Scottish word for counter-clockwise, also meaning against the way or a contrary direction.

In the ancient Celtic practice of walking the rounds to approach a sacred site, there was a prescribed way to walk and that way was sunwise or clockwise.

So widdershins would be the wrong direction.

This has left me thinking about direction and how our experience of a familiar place or path can shift just by walking or even just looking in a different direction.

Practice: Walking in New Directions

I’m curious, do you have a direction you naturally walk?

In crowded places, our direction is sometimes dictated by the flow of a traffic. In more empty spaces, do you notice a natural inclination to begin in one direction or another?

As we move into summer, I invite you to try walking a familar path in a new direction. How does this impact what you notice as you walk?

For summer, I will be spending a bit more time wandering and wondering and a bit less time on screen. Typically, I write every two weeks. For July and August, I will write monthly with a return to a regular biweekly newsletter in September.

Thank you for reading and being a part of creative community through this newsletter.

With a grateful heart,

Kathryn

A moment after Kevin’s graduation walk in the new chiars he built for the porch.