10 K A Day

I rise before dawn, which is not hard when you live as far north as Milwaukee and Crater Lake and Vladivostok, and on the western edge of the eastern time zone.  As the sky brightens I am out the door for my daily excursion.  My goal is 10 K a day, about 6.2 miles.  

I walk, rather than run for three reasons.  1) When I jogged I hated it. I did it for health and ground out every step.  2) As a consequence of those years, my left achilles tendon instantly objects to anything approaching 5 mph.  3)  I can notice the world around me.  

Last week, for instance, along a perfectly ordinary side street near my house, I saw a Willys jeep.  That instantly reminded me of the story I shared  before.  For a split second I was in both moments.  Have you ever had such a moment?  Of course.  We all do.  I seek them out, though.  They are temporal pearls.  

That’s a lovely image, but it would be more accurate to say they are temporal truffles.  They lie beneath the surface of life.  We find them by catching their scent, as I literally did thirty years ago. That was in my jogging days.  While visiting my mother-in-law I went out for a jog.  Lumbering along, spending most of my thoughts on not slowing down or falling down, I turned a corner in the neighborhood where she lived and was startled by the intense aroma of mulberries, something I had not smelt in years.  

Instantly I was seven years old in our backyard where a great mulberry tree dropped its berries into the rather pathetic pool dad had erected.  On hot humid Maryland summer days we dove and splashed and slid about on the plastic sheet that was its bottom, coming in looking like victims of some hideous pox because of the smashed mulberries in the water.  In that instant, gripped by the smell, I had to stop and let it all in.  (note: stock photo, not of my actual house!)  

For those who did not see the first two posts, this blog is an account of days –  my days – living what turned out to be a Pilgrim Life.  It is for those moments when time and place turn inside out that I live.  It does not happen every day, but often enough to make me want it more.  (Anyone out there remember intermittent reinforcement from Psych 101?)  

That is one reason why my 10k a day are as vital to me as breakfast, and when I cannot do it I am a caged animal, roaming the house nervously.  When we had a ‘polar vortex’ a few years back that dropped everything below zero I did not leave the house for three days.  I was a mess.  I need something that takes me away from this time and place, which sounds exactly opposite the usual spiritual ideaL of being centered and all that.  My spirit needs to be de-centered.  It takes 10 K to do that.  

“To be a pilgrim” is an old religious practice, of course, dating back before the years divided by Christ.  But for me it is not just a part of my spiritual life; it is my spiritual life.  It is what I am as much as who I am.  Did you see the quote marks at the start of the paragraph?  It is a quote from a hymn by John Bunyan, famous for his allegorical “Pilgrim’s Progress” and yes I have read it.  It’s words are my patent:

Who would true valour see,
Let him come hither;
One here will constant be,
Come wind, come weather.
There’s no discouragement
Shall make him once relent
His first avowed intent,
To be a pilgrim.

As I did with Borges, I made my way to his grave in Bunhill Field in London.  That place is worth a story or two in itself.  Cemeteries are among the liveliest places on earth, I have found.

It took me a long time to make that vow of his, or perhaps accept that it was my destiny. (Remind me to tell a story about the hilarious use of the word ‘destiny’ by a colleague. I still laugh when I think about it).  No small amount comes from the physical need for dopamine that wandering does for me.  For my soul to be still I must be on the move, feel the rhythm of feet and arms, sense sky and sun and cloud, hear the wind and bird.  I cannot say that doing so is as valorous as Bunyan says it is.  I only know it is what I must be.