How to go for a walk

Here is something for your mind.

You go for a walk and you don’t bring your phone. You keep your eyes up, and around, and pretend you are the first person ever to see it all just like you are seeing it.

Because this is true.

You are seeing it like this for the first time anyone has ever seen like this. That is what presence is, seeing now, and feeling how the seeing feels.

When you take this walk you may experience a great welling-up of feeling at the simplest things. I do.

I turned left from the cabin to find the playground I saw on the way in yesterday. I walked by the cabin with number 9 on the door. Above it was a sitting area right at the base of a steep rockwall, a two-person chair on a swing, and a small fire pit with kindling arranged perfectly like a teepee. I remember that I wondered if it was just for show because on the drive in there were signs about fire restrictions.

After fifty yards I saw the playground was close, but on the other side of the creek to the right. I could turn around and go back to the small bridge closer to town but I didn’t want to. I was wearing my hiking sandals that my fiancee laughs about.

I slipped between two low-slung short-term rental cabins and just crossed the creek. The water was about one-foot deep except for one step between two oval rocks that was about two-feet deep.

At the playground there was a sign translating basic English phrases to Spanish. It was metal and well-made with cylindrical orange pillars holding a rectangular white plate with matching orange letters. There were at least ten phrases, like

What is your name? = Cómo te llamas?

I saw the sign as a token of how it might be a good idea to connect people. I like when people try to understand each other and are gentle.

So a bilingual sign beside a children’s playground becomes a wave of feeling.

There is a fuck ton of presence waiting, and waiting, inside you because mostly we avoid it. It’s all set up out there to keep us turning to distractions that are easy enough to reach and yet insipid and insidious slow-death mechanisms.

How are you ever supposed to know where to go if you don’t allow your feelings to become a form of intelligence? And how could you ever know how to listen to your feelings if you do not practice?

We have a natural inclination to feel safe, but numb is not safe.

There is no pain, you are receding
A distant ship, smoke on the horizon
You are only coming through in waves
Your lips move, but I can’t hear what you’re saying

When I was a child, I had a fever
My hands felt just like two balloons

Now I’ve got that feeling once again
I can’t explain, you would not understand
This is not how I am

• Pink Floyd, from the song Comfortably Numb

Numbness is a fog through which you cannot see, so you flail. Your mind flailing is when your thoughts metastasize like cancer. Under the out-of-control thinking is a feeling you don’t think you can handle. This isn’t a conscious process. It’s an unconscious defense.

I haven’t been sleeping well for a few weeks. Happens sometimes for a little while. Late at night, my mind will say you will never sleep again and tomorrow is ruined. Your body is going to fall apart. You will not be able to do anything tomorrow. You can’t even fill out that form for your dad’s will.

Very dramatic.

Last night, we got to bed early. Very quickly, Bella was asleep beside me in the little cabin we rented for a wedding in a small town in Colorado.

Around midnight I took my camping headlamp and put it on the red setting and opened my book. It almost worked, but each time I felt myself drifting, and I put the book down, turned off the light, and covered my eyes with a t-shirt, I would feel hot on my neck and my heartbeat going faster.

Every time.

I almost grabbed my phone a few times without even knowing I was reaching for it, even though it was on airplane mode “for the night.”

I fell asleep only when I told myself to feel the reaching inclination that made me want out of my own skin, made me want to contract my body and writhe around like a little kid.

I know this is embarrassing. The reason I don’t care about telling you is that what I do care about is helping someone else, maybe you.

I repeated to myself, many, many, times “I am content” while breathing in a specific pattern.

In the morning I had a dream that I was an hour late to meet my friend Mason to go skiing and had also committed to a different activity at the same trailhead with my cousin. The base of the hike was busy and everyone had their gear well-organized to bootpack up the mountain. I had no pack and my skis kept slipping around in my arms.

On the way back from the park to the cabin, I didn’t cross the creek again. I wanted my sandals to dry.

I saw an older man with long hair that was grey and almost yellow in parts. He was sitting on a bench watching the creek. I thought about asking him what he saw, but when he looked up I just waved with two fingers like out on the ranch roads in Montana. He sat up and smiled and also waved.

I walked on. He went back to looking at the creek.

The parking lot was more empty than when I left. I saw the housekeeping trolley outside one of the cabins. It was a little colder and cloudy. I could not see the exact location of the sun in the sky.

If you have time on Sunday, go for a walk without your phone. When you get home, write down what you saw for three minutes. Don’t do anything else until you do that, and don’t worry if the writing is amazing. It’s just something good for your mind.