Centuries ago, somewhere on the plains of Moab in the Middle East, the prophet Moses reminded his people of all the commandments he’d collected. We call this the book of “Deuteronomy”, which means “repetition of the Law,” which is significant, I think, since Moses was a man who was self-conscious about the way he spoke, who described himself as “not eloquent,” “slow of speech, and of a slow tongue,” which tells me that whatever was reiterated must have been extra important for him to make the effort to say it again.
Here’s what he repeats: the Ten Commandments, his code of law, and a summary of the covenants expected and available between God and the people of Israel. The thing I like most about Moses’s re-exhortation is the metaphor he uses to describe obedience: “ye shall walk in all the ways which the Lord your God hath commanded you,” states the end of chapter five, “that ye may live, and that it may be well with you, and that ye may prolong your days in the land which ye shall possess.”
Of all the words he could have used to represent the action of commandment-keeping, law-abiding, covenant-holding, Moses chose the word “walk.” Perhaps that was because walking is a movement that suggests progression, travel from one point to a destination, a journey in which the walker travels somewhere intentionally and in doing so becomes different. Changed.
“That ye may live,” he then promises, “and that it may be well with you.” I trust those words. Moses was an excellent walker, I imagine, having wandered the wilderness for forty years. And he certainly changed by the time he reached Horeb.
Henry David Thoreau—prophet in his own sphere of transcendental observation—was (I believe) of a similar opinion. He admired those who truly “understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks—who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering.” The “saunter” was Thoreau’s preferred mode of walking, of that forward motion towards some important end. “… Sauntering, which word is beautifully derived ‘from idle people who roved about the country in the Middle Ages … under pretense of going a la Sainte Terre,’ to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, ‘there goes a Sainte-Terrer,’ a Saunterer, a Holy-Lander.” In this sense, both Moses and Thoreau held that walking was the way to a transcended self. Somewhere close to God.
There are many ways to walk. When I think of certain “types” of walking, faces come to mind—people who I cannot separate from the way they go about the ground. Like Moses who was privy to wandering and Thoreau who enjoyed the saunter, these other exceptional walkers seem to have found both the mastery of their walk and a greater grasp of themselves. And, I suppose, that God that set them walking. Is this correlational, or causational? I picture each as they walk.
The Moseyer
My grandma always used to describe her husband as a “moseyer.” This is fitting for the aspiring cowboy he seems to be. My grandpa’s nickname amongst his ranching friends is Cactus Pete, and he attends the Cowboy Poetry Gathering and the ranch’s sheep shearing week every year, amongst other things only a cowboy could truly appreciate. He gets tan in the summers, the top of his bald head collecting dark freckles. He wears collared shirts and jeans and often a baseball cap. He loves his riding lawnmower, peanut-butter-and-potato-chip sandwiches, long jokes, the ranch, and his family. And he takes his time with all of them.
Which is what I believe moseying is. My mom says that growing up their family took road trips as often as they could, but the itinerary was flexible, to put it lightly. They’d stop in a small town for gas and end up staying in that small town for hours to mosey about its museum or park. “Grandpa never rushes,” mom tells me, “He’s never in a hurry. But not in a lazy way… he’s just taking his time to check things out.”
My grandpa does a lot of things—he’s worked in banks, in law, in business, on the ranch, he has a large family, he actively participates in his church congregation, he loves to travel—and any one or two of these things could justifiably require rushing from one location or task to another. Instead, he moseys. His walk is slow but purposeful. He has one hand in a jean pocket and the other holding a Diet Coke. He reads plaques, listens intently to people. He asks good questions and tells good stories, readily sharing his own life’s lessons. My grandpa’s thoughtful steps are what have given him the time to listen and learn. It’s a slow move from place to place, but I know he’d call it time well spent. He’s patient with others and with himself. Moseying is a patient man’s walk.
The Racer
I believe the only time I (and maybe you can relate) have watched race walking is during the Olympics, and I also believe it usually gets flipped on as a joke. My laughs have turned from comedy to incredulity, however, when I realize that the awkward quick-waddle these athletes are doing have them clocking in average mile times of 7 minutes and 42 seconds for 31 miles straight.
Absolutely unreal, the way these people race.
Strict rules and regulations dictate race walking: the competitor must maintain contact with the ground at all times, the forward leg must be straightened when its foot touches the ground, and then must stay straight until it has passed under the body. The sport is nearly as mental as it is technical; racers must practice strict movement until this very abnormal way of moving becomes natural, instinctive.
The 2021 Summer Olympics in Tokyo hosted the last 50k men’s race walk event the Olympics will ever offer. The gold medalist time was a jaw-dropping 3 hours and 50 minutes—faster than the worldwide average time for a marathon, plus seven miles longer and without any running. Of the 59 competitors, only 49 finished, and two were disqualified.
Twenty-nine minutes after the 46th athlete, Ecuador’s Claudio Villanueva Flores crossed the finish line, coming in dead last. Most of the spectators and many of the athletes had already exited the venue, but the remaining supporters roared for Flores, as loudly as a small crowd can, as he heaved himself over the race’s end. In the footage of his finish he is sobbing, doubled over in exhaustion and emotion. His coach embraces him, and Flores cries harder. When Flores collapses to his knees and race organizers quickly rush to him with a wheelchair and offer to take him away, he refuses. He’ll walk it off.
“No one could have begrudged Flores if he decided to bow out,” said one journalist, “but he persevered and produced one of the lasting images of the Olympic Games.”
Flores powered through thirty-one miles of mechanical movement, over four hours of foot over foot, arms pumping. I believe there is some catharsis and clarity that comes when muscle memory kicks in and the brain clears, its subconscious firing on all cylinders telling the body to move in patterns, leaving the consciousness of your brain free to focus wherever you want or need it to. I believe that’s what allowed Flores to complete his race, despite his body’s sure protests. He could have stopped—he would not have been alone in that—but he didn’t. He channeled a mastery of his own mind and body simultaneously, funneling focus and canceling out unhelpful stimuli, which is what surrounds and attacks and abuses so many of us non-racers just trying to move. Racers maintain a control over themselves that we may desperately need. Flores is inspiring not because he started something, but because maintained the control to finish.
The Toddler
At her one-year checkup my baby sister measured in the 50th percentile for height, the 50th percentile for weight, and the 98th percentile for head circumference. She was like a walking bobble head, the very embodiment of toddling. Her head would tilt this way or that and her body would follow, tumbling about in uneven steps that varied in gait and speed and surety. It was hilarious, and moderately concerning.
I don’t know what came first, the “toddle” or the “toddler”. To toddle is to step unevenly, as if an unbalanced, uncoordinated child. To be a toddler suggests then an existence of uneven, failed stepping, and yet we treat toddlers as some of the most successful people in the world. They learn faster, their victories are more exciting. They shock and awe us in ways grown adults can’t.
A toddler is constantly vulnerable to injury with any fall—their skin is soft and thin, their bones are small, their immune system is developing. Yet they are resilient. They cry from the shock more than the pain, and after some ritz crackers and a cheese stick, they’re toddling once again. The salt from their tears hasn’t even had time to dry on their faces before they’re up to toddle around, hurtling towards another wall, curb, or coffee table.
Toddlers cannot be confident in their world—they have not had time to learn it yet. They don’t even know what “confidence” means. But they’re nonetheless innocently confident in their own ability to toddle again and again and again. To them it just makes sense.
My steps got me across the room once before, they must be able to do so again.
I’d call that faith.
The Shuffler
For the few months I lived in England, Mary drove me to church each Sunday. Her timing was impeccable—she arrived at the doors of my building every week at 9:20 am, on the dot. Her consistency was a comforting reassurance for me, living in a foreign country where nothing else felt familiar.
Mary drove like a maniac, especially for an 80-year-old woman. I’d never experienced that kind of speed or road rage from such an unassuming figure… had our windows been rolled down I am sure her wispy white hair would have slicked back cartoonishly. Mary did not like “that Meghan Markle,” but she did love the color purple and wore it faithfully from head to toe every time I saw her—another consistent pillar of comfort I loved dearly. She loved being English, loved her family’s history, she didn’t draw attention to herself other than with her lovely purple-ness, which was still somehow sweet and never overbearing.
When we’d get out of the car at the chapel I would run around to the driver’s side of the car, and hold her hand as she maneuvered her pointed purple shoes onto the pavement. And then she would shuffle inside.
Mary was a dream at the shuffle. Her steps were small, close to the ground, and soft. She made it look graceful and gentle, so contrasted from her pedal-to-the-metal driving. She would shuffle around to each member of the congregation (it was a small group) and ask them about every quiet and important thing she knew they were experiencing. Mary had an incredible memory, which made me wonder if maybe the shuffling came from her dragging every fact she’d ever acquired around with her. Unlike the unexperienced toddler, her decades of life had taught her how to prevent falls. Shuffling is a sign of wisdom, I think. Mary scattered those tidbits of information back around in the form of genuine interest and investment. Wisdom personified, she shuffled with both kinds of grace— an elegance of movement, and a consideration of others.
The Strider
Luke, my brother, was four when he was diagnosed with epilepsy. He went through eleven different medications and six months of keto dieting, waiting for something to kick his brain back into gear. By age nine his doctors re-diagnosed him with “refractory” absence epilepsy, meaning they did not anticipate him growing out of it like most kids do. I didn’t appreciate how different his upbringing was from my own, when I was younger: I knew school was hard, explaining his “spacing out” to peers was awkward, sports were difficult. One of the first things that made me realize just how much this condition limited him was when he turned 15 and was not allowed behind the wheel of a car, while the rest of his friends were getting their licenses.
So while his friends drove, he strode.
When I say he strode, I mean his long-legged steps were confident and determined but also comfortable. Like Luke was—confident, positive, sure of himself, sure of the ground beneath him and the air around him. Luke was too busy dreaming up plans to worry about how he would travel there. He strode everywhere. For anyone, with anyone, to anyone. To the store for a snack, to the park down the road, to his friend’s place in the neighborhood over. He worked at a restaurant over a mile away from our home and would commute on foot every day. We’d ask if he wanted a ride, and Luke would say he did not. He preferred to walk.
He still does. He eventually (by a medical miracle that shocked his doctors) grew out of his epilepsy at the age of 20. He got his license, he’s a responsible driver. Still, he regularly spends hours traversing the sidewalks of wherever he lives, ear buds in his ears, hood of his sweatshirt pulled over his big curls. This is his time to “separate from the chaos,” he tells me. His time to ponder, simplify, and regain his footing through things that so many trip over. To stride is to step with surety, and Luke is sure of so much.
The Trekker
I do not know Tom Turcich, but I’ve seen how he walks.
In 2007 Tom’s friend died tragically at only 17 years old. This was a catalyst for Tom, who felt a sudden push to really live. He decided he’d join nine others in history who have travelled on foot around the entire world. He started just days before his 26th birthday in 2015, heading down his driveway in New Jersey pushing a baby stroller loaded with camping and hiking gear, a camera, computer, and crate full of food. The man trekked.
When he reached Austin, Texas four months in he adopted a dog named Savannah, who would trek with him to the very end. Tom got a bacterial infection, was held up at knifepoint, was sequestered in Azerbaijan for over six months during the coronavirus pandemic, suffered through every element and every terrain, and trekked through all 29,876 miles of it. It took Tom seven years to make this journey. He returned home to New Jersey in May of 2022, becoming the 10th person on earth to have completed that circumnavigation.
If you have trekked before you have likely felt its value—it stretches your lungs and your body, pulls places you’ve never pulled before, it makes you grateful for oxygen and chairs—but it takes someone like Tom to trek well.
Tom has told interviewers and fans and followers that there were plenty of times on his trek that he was “not in a good place,” mentally (though I imagine there were plenty of places that did not feel good physically, either). “But I don’t think I ever would have stopped,” he says. Not even if it had gotten worse than the mugging and sickness and solitude.
Part of trekking is endurance—pushing through hard things that try your strength, that have you questioning your purpose and reevaluating your destination. Tom’s steps were enduring ones. Committed, motivated, determined. Those are the kinds of steps that teach you about motivation; where you go for strength, what you look to for hope. I think the best way to practice those steps and learn that lesson may be how Tom did it: trekking mostly alone, intending to meet new people, spending the greatest amount of time meeting himself.
My parents tell me I was walking at nine months old. Not unheard of, societally, but still early enough to be a “spectacle,” my mom says. My grandma joked “what is she in such a hurry for?”
Twenty-five years later I am proud to say that I walk all the time. Daily, even. And I’ve walked enough walks to be well-versed in many different types: the amble, the parade, the trudge, the march, the tread, the traipse. The lumber. The hike. I’ve scrolled streets, promenaded paths, roamed rooms.
I don’t know what kind of walk I might call mine. Maybe all of them, at one time or another. I think, though, that it might be less important how we walk and more important that we walk.
I mean this:
Luke (the strider) told me that when he walks he usually thinks about what he’s “going to do next”—in his day, his job, his life. He thinks about who he wants to be. His thoughts are in as much a forward motion as his feet. I don’t always find walks to be so revelatory, so I asked him what he gets out of that time walking and thinking. He said “It just gives me time to figure out myself, I guess.”
Which makes me think of this quote I saw the other day from Laurette Mortimer, a “zen walker,” that said “Walking brings me back to myself.” I like how that sounds, the idea that there may be some physiological phenomenon where through walking we can reattach what has drifted within us—the mind from its motive, or the soul from its Maker. And maybe that through walking we might be brought back to ourselves improved. More grounded, centered, enlightened, developed. I believe Moses or Thoreau might add more alive, more well, more godly. Transcendent.
I think God likes all walks. I know He loves all walkers—the wanderer, saunterer, trekker, toddler, and more. I also think that, whether conscious of it or not, each way of walking allows its walker to be brought back to themselves: allowing them to feel a sense of self more fully with each soul-supporting step. Each walk may amplify something different, something that speaks well to the walker’s mind or personality, that connects them to themself in the way they need it most. The time it takes to mosey is time spent pondering existence and creation and miracles in context of that one individual. The self-mastery it takes to race strengthens one’s spirit over their body. The gentle, purposeful movement of shuffled steps reflect the kind of gentle, genuine attention that everyone needs to feel valued.
I need that self-reconnection, because I’ve felt adrift plenty. And I believe that (ironically,) I’m not alone in that. But I think a master walker—Claudio Villanueva Flores, Laurette Mortimer, Moses, my grandpa, Luke, Mary, even Henry David Thoreau— would say that once adrift, maybe the shortest path back to yourself is simply the one you start walking on.
