What walking (also) is

Though I'm as linear as the next soon-to-be 65-year-old, a core attraction of the web log form is its start-anywhere, go-anywhere, end-anywhere openness and randomness. That's important to someone who reserves the right to change his mind, his preferences and his positions without prior notice.

For example:

What prompted this blog was a desire to reposition walking as something more than

--a mode of transportation you're forced to adopt when you can't drive anymore

--a good-health strategy

--a spiritual practice

--a specialized activity unrelated to everyday life (as in, driving to the park to take a walk or ride a bike)

At first, good communications practice told me I had to be single-minded in my approach in order to accomplish that repositioning: Focus on walking as a practical activity:

But that was too confining.

I needed a framework loose enough to consider, for example, the near-certainty that walking sometimes inspires, that you're aligned with the wind and ground both, almost a parallel force, the three of you moving forward together.

I experience this certainty in physical, not mystical, terms. It feels embedded in the way I move.

Walking is also that.