the path

Many attempts to better oneself, or some part of oneself have been called ‘a path’, or even ‘the path’.

I wonder if these metaphorical paths started as real paths, a real way you had to follow to get somewhere. A test which, among other things, involved walking.

Over the years attention has congregated around the rewards of following such and such a path. So much has been said or written about these religious paths that the original impulse has, perhaps, been overlooked.

Instead of looking at metaphorical paths why not walk real ones?

Ordinary paths go somewhere, or promise to. Some paths are straight, others windy. But when you are on the right path it is always straight, so to speak. The best paths, from a walker’s point of view, neither rise nor fall but follow a ridge line or, even better, the side of a long ridge, so that one has uninterrupted views of the valley below but do not have to pay for them by strenuous climbing or getting blown about on a ridge line. A high path, straight, but not straight up.

You can make up your own route. I’ve done this a few times- in the desert it’s easy- just point and walk. In the country in Britain or France you can cobble together a likely route by linking up paths, tracks and roads. But often it’s more fun, and certainly easier, to follow a set path- a national long distance route or a Grande Randonnee.

The adventurer in me is troubled by this, or used to be. Surely following the packaged route is a cop out, less of an adventure? Maybe. But following the designated route is a path, a bona fide path and therefore a pilgrim’s route of sorts.

For a start you can plan your days, work out your miles and likely stopping places. They’ll be sign posts so you won’t be nose in map the whole time, which always means you see less. They’ll be other walkers to meet and swap notes and stories with. Because of the ease of route following you can drop down a gear in vigilence and go into the deep meditative state that allows you to solve problems in depth, think things through without a hitch. Wordsworth used to prefer tracks to rough ground for walking because he could think up poetry so much better when he didn’t need to watch every footstep. Something similar is true of the long distance path.

It isn’t always obvious which is the right path to walk, the right one for you. It might be something well known that you have always wanted to do like the Pennine Way or the South West Coastal path. For me a strong attraction was the chance to walk through places I had been to as a child. The path as perspective on personal history.

Of course it’s nice to see wonderful views, they are a bonus, guaranteed usually on a well known walk. Wildlife too is always welcome. But making the miles is more important than either. That doesn’t mean one has to be in a rush. You can go as slowly as you like, but you have to make the miles. Otherwise you’re not paying your way, you’re just strolling, a civilian not a pilgrim. Making the miles means you aren’t just consuming the countryside. It’s a ritual like praying at certain times of the day. The ritual defines the day and leaves holes for other stuff, important stuff.

Carrying your own gear and food seems important too. I was not surprised to discover that the marathon des sables insists on each runner carrying his sleeping bag, clothes and food for six days- but not water. It’s a race so why impose this extra weight? I think because this desert marathon is also a kind of rite of passage, a pilgrimage of sorts and pilgrims carry their simplified life with them, on their back like a tortoise’s shell.

Walking the path is about simplifying life so much that things you don’t usually notice have a chance to break through. You create enough silence, shut down enough static, that, over a sustained period, you begin to relax deeply, go with the flow, the flow of the path.

It isn’t just about living in the present either- though that is always very welcome. Somehow, while walking day after day, one’s sense of the future also becomes expanded. One has the leisure to make endless plans. And our sense of the past is expanded too, lots of time to digest things that happened to us, put them in perspective- nothing ever seems so pressing and overwhelming while walking.

When we expand our sense of past, present and future, time slows down- psychological time. We no longer feel life is rushing past. And when it is over you’ll remember the days or weeks of that walk for the rest of your life.

welcome to the temporary autonomous zone

Whacko philosopher Hakim Bey (whose stuff I love by the way) coined the very useful idea of the TAZ- temporary autonomous zone. The idea is that freedom only really exists in things on the move or sited someplace temporarily. You can see the gist: we've gone from cultures with plenty of common land to places where every inch is owned and policed, kind of; much of it with scary but often ineffective CCTV cameras. Ah, I can feel my PQ (paranoia quotient) rising! There's the clue: a lot of this stuff is all in the mind. I keep having to recall the 'licence fallacy'- broadly speaking people who make their own cars find the easiest part getting them licenced for the road (because inspectors sympathise and are interested in their projects) yet the uninformed always assume 'the red tape' is the hardest part of the project- the deal killer- when it isn't. I have to remind myself that but I too set up a business in Egypt when I would have been scared to in the UK because of my imagined ideas about red tape. Of course ballsy real businessmen just plough on regardless, and, compared to Europe I understand few places are as easy to start businesses as the UK. But those implanted ideas are strong. A friend who settled in Australia recently told me 'The UK just doesn't have an entrepeneurial feel'. Hmm- more negativity we just don't need. But the grain of truth refuses to be silenced, and, it turns up in the idea of the TAZ and walking.

A long distance walk is a perfect temporary autonomous zone. You stop when and where you like. No one has tabs on you. You can convene meetings around the campfire. Your spirits rise. Long distance walking festivals could be the next big thing now that festivals are becoming a little too pricey, a little too corralled.

When I lived in Tokyo in the 1990s every year on halloween night, a train on the yamanote circle line would be commandeered for a moving party. Maybe there could be a Pennine Way festival, or better, a Southern Upland Way festival. The idea being that it keeps on moving- even if you join it half way along you have to walk to keep up with the party.

fishing with Harry

Loved fishing classic by Tony Baws- Fishing With Harry.

Relinquish the Boss Position

You get on a plane. You aren’t the boss, especially if you fly cattle class or on Easy jet. You have to relinquish the boss position to the pilot and his hated minions. But, hey, it’s only for a flight. 

As people get older they get to liking the feeling of being in control, or being 'the boss'. They assume, wrongly, that it is 'being the boss' that has got them where they are. Actually being treated as if you are the boss is a by product of age, wealth and skill. And skill is related to learning power not boss power.

Boss power feels good though. So it's not surprising that as people get older they start to fear what might happen when they relinquish the boss position. 

People who are the big bosses at work are sometimes, strangely, better at relinquishing boss power than people who are midway in the pecking order. In order to get to the very top they've had to learn a thing or two. And to have your eyes wide open to learn you have to relinquish, at that moment, the knee-jerk need to be the boss. 

Writers are often the very worst at relinquishing the boss position. In their mind, because of their facility with words and arguments, they are always in the right and always ‘the winner’. If they are dissed or insulted, they make a very convincing case, to themselves, for the ignorance and cretinism of the attacker. If they are bested in public in an argument they go home and write it out, getting the better of everyone. Lots of the best fiction is driven by this kind of wish fulfilment. Jane Austen. Ian Fleming. Patrick O Brien.

In fact, the more inept at doing things in everyday life the writer is, the more likely he is to be a super hero in his own mind, such are the subtle side effects of refusing to relinquish the boss position.

On training weekends with executives you find it is often the bosses (medium not big bosses) who screw up the most. This is good for morale, but bad for the boss’s ego. You see, they are all in a new situation but the underlings are used to relinquishing boss power. When they do this their brain is freed up to see WHAT IS REALLY GOING ON. But the boss is so used to appearing the boss, and fearful of what might happen if he doesn’t appear the boss, that he doesn’t listen and screws up. On a raft trip for executives, lead by a friend of mine, the boss suddenly leapt out of the raft onto a rock. He did this midstream because he panicked though he called it ‘an executive decision’, ie. he had to act the boss, even if it was a dumb move. The others stayed in the raft because they could SEE WHAT WAS REALLY GOING ON. (And rescuing the boss took the rest of the day...)

On desert trips, Nile dwelling Egyptians are often the best people to take. They know how to relinquish being the boss (even though they do use too much water). Brits and Germans are worse. They’re always asking when the next stop is, how far the next oasis is. They see less and learn less because they can’t relinquish the boss position.

It’s only for a few minutes. Or a few days. In the West, for some reason, we are obsessed by dominate or be dominated. But you don’t need to ‘dominate’ if you can see what is REALLY GOING ON. Which you can- if you kick back, observe and listen, and relinquish the boss position.

Learning is about observing, about paying attention. ‘Paying’ is an appropriate word because it will cost you. The cost is the computing power of your brain. When you have a ‘boss position’ head on you’re using up masses of computing power just operating that head. It’s not a ‘learning head’.

Strangely the same is true of being ‘humble’. Being ‘humble’ uses up computing power so there is none left over to learn. I know because I studied for a long time in Japan acting ‘humble’ to the Japanese Aikido teachers. Bowing and scraping and not realising that all that is not an end in itself, but simply a mechanism, designed in the past, to help you relinquish the boss position. So that you CAN SEE WHAT IS REALLY GOING ON and therefore learn something. Except I was so busy hoping to get recognition for all my bowing and scraping I was actually the slowest learner in the group.

When we say that someone is humble we usually mean they are good at acting submissively. But that is not the same as relinquishing the boss position. Acting submissively means relinquishing not just the power to tell others what to do, but also the power to act without permission. But when we relinquish the boss position we retain the power to act without permission, because that is part and parcel of retaining the power to SEE what is really going on.

There is also the other peculiarly British thing where you say “I am not the boss here, but neither is anyone else.” In other words you become a kind of policeman making sure no one ‘gets above themselves’. Brits do this with aggressive mocking humour usually and it’s a rather effective way a dominant person can dominate without appearing to. But who cares? If someone wants to be the boss see where that goes, see what is really going on, maybe it doesn’t matter. Being a policeman uses up a lot of computing power too.

But just as one should be able to relinquish being the boss, one should be able to embrace it too. Kids don’t want their teacher to admit his doubts about the education system, they want to learn how to spell. If a group on an expedition is about to walk over a cliff they need a boss to tell them it's dangerous, they don’t need a discussion group.

Relinquishing the boss position doesn’t just mean relinquishing the power to tell other what to do. It means relinquishing the knee-jerk reaction to self-justify, to be ‘in the right’; it means giving up the need ‘to have an answer’, giving up the need to feel the best, the best informed, the ‘one who is really right’. It doesn’t mean you have to feel like you are a dunce, or someone in error. All you have to do is slide yourself into neutral, engage outwardly, direct your attention outward and admit to yourself OK, maybe I don’t have all the answers, but let’s see, all the same, what is really going on here.

death in valencia

I am thoroughly enjoying Death in Valencia by Jason Webster. His Max Camara detective novels set in Valencia just keep getting better and better. One that will be worth its weight when packed in the rucksack by anyone with a long walk in mind -and the great opportunities for reading long distance walking offers- somehow when you're out of doors all day you have so much more time...

manufacturing microadventures

If your job involves going out into the world and doing stuff you probably encounter a fair few microadventures each week. This gives life texture, things to talk about and slows time down. But many of us live lives where not that much happens. As a writer- which is what I do most of the time these days- I can have a very nice satisfying day getting my words done, but then I look back on the weeks and think- what happened? Anyone in a reasonably rewarding but outwardly uneventful job probably feels the same. Hence our attraction to jobs that supply microadventures automatically- paramedic, policeman, tree surgeon, nurse, priest, investigative journalist- all these bring lots of microadventures home without any effort seeking them.

We sometimes think that activity is the answer, and take up a sport. But what could be duller than the life of a professional sportsman (Michael Phelps lives a life that makes a desert anchorite look like an action hero)?

The confusion is natural. A dull but inwardly satisfying life is weighted towards the yin end of the spectrum. Activity and adventure are both yang. We look for balance and lunge for whatever yang stuff is on offer.

Though activity may lead to adventure it doesn’t guarantee it. Take running v. walking. When we run it seems more manly and yangish but actually a walk through unknown terrain will harvest many more microadventures.

And I suggest there is an inner nutritional component to adventure that is beyond the lower division into yin and yang. Adventure, I think, is best characterised as microadventure (to get us away from the Bear Grylls requirement that eating a raw frog whilst jet skiing across lake Titicaca is a necessary component of any adventure) indeed I’ve found that any big adventure is simply lots of microadventures piled on top of each other, usually in a remote location which adds glamour of course, but doesn’t really alter the nutritional value.

Making something out of nothing is one of our uniquely human defining characteristics. People who make us laugh or can take something overlooked or discarded and turn it into something beautiful or useful- these are the people being ‘most human’, certainly in one meaningful sense of the word. So it is with a microadventure- it’s making an adventure out of nothing, or not much. All you need to do is stretch things a bit, reframe stuff, be just a tiny bit creative.

Instead of just going on the same old country walk, look on the map for some strange feature and design a walk around it, or go for a walk in an area that was the backdrop to a novel or a film. The actual microadventure won’t be this act of creative spin, rather the spin sets things spinning and then the microadventure happens. I often search out hills that look like stone age encampments on the map. Then when I’m there the microadventure might be finding flint tools or maybe just lighting a fire and making a cup of tea in a novel setting. But it helps to have a bit of spin before you go.

One way to add spin is dice travelling. Throw a dice to decide your route and mode of transport and watch the microadventures pile up. Another is to keep a note of any weird places that crop up in your reading- then visit them. I recently heard about a ghost town in Western Australia that has gone from a population of 7000 to 12- and I know that’ll be sufficient spin for a microadventure if I get to visit there. Closer to home I’ve noticed that after heavy rains the weirs on tiny streams near my house- streams you can’t usually kayak- become raging torrents for a day or two- definitely a microadventure to be had there. Or write to someone you admire and set up an interview- I did this for a 95 year old explorer- Rupert Harding Newman – and the stories he told during that encounter definitely ranked as a microadventure.

A microadventure is a combination of new stimulation filtered through the way you look at the world. In other words, once you have the microadventure ‘hat’ on you’ll start having them, you’ll start seeing them coming.  It’s something you tell as a story or an anecdote. It’s an experience that generates a new insight.

What is the inner nutrition of the microadventure? Have a few and then think about it.

why we walk

When we walk there are other benefits apart from the brutally systemic ones of doing miles and ticking off days. If long distance walking, as a model of a successful enterprise, is to have any resonance beyond the soundbite and the catchphrase, one has to excavate deeper into its lasting appeal. So, one walks for:

Health.

And, similar, but not the same: exercise

The effect on the mind.

Adventure- pure adventure albeit not of a very dangerous kind.

Fresh air.

Wild animal watching.

Making fires and living in a simplified way- not to be underestimated.

I won’t deal with these in any order, partly as a counterweight to the urgent tone, which sometimes has to be adopted, of the self-help text. But those moments of urgency can benefit from a few meanders, just as, from a kayaker’s point of view, rapids benefit from periods of slack water for recovery and preparation for the next onslaught.

The effect on the mind. This has to be a centrally important part of the whole enterprise, indeed, it explains partly the addiction many show to walking. Old heroin addicts reformed take to ticking off Munros, each 3000 foot peak the healthful equivalent of a syringe of dope. There is no question that sustained walking beyond the merely nominal 45 minute stroll, builds up a complex mental state bordering on a mild euphoria. I say complex because it is more complex than a predictable hit. One never really goes walking simply to get the hit, but one is mildly disappointed when one doesn’t. Weather has something to do with it, light and views also. A walk through woods can be an exercise in ecstasy if the woods are, perhaps, ancient and gnarled beeches, but close packed firs or sycamores dripping a rain storm that ended hours ago can be simply depressing, unnerving even.

And then, when walking, all rumination seems positive, getting somewhere, unlike when we are sitting down and pondering when thoughts tend to spiral in and pile up, clogging everything up. Not for nothing is this condition of introspection known as ‘satan’s intestines’.

But walking thoughts aren’t like that. You can think things through, if the walk is long enough. You can certainly gain perspective, zooming out and seeing it’s just a hill of beans after all.

When I do long distance walks I sleep less and awake refreshed, partly because, I am sure, the act of walking and thinking attains the state of meditation. It fulfils the role of dreaming, reordering the mind’s contents in a beneficial way. I know I feel as if things are sorted, decks cleaned, ready to get on with something new.

You can go years circling stale old thoughts, thoughts that hold you back. A long distance walk is one way to break free from all this.