Walking Into Wholeness: A 13-Year Promise
As a child, I was quite free-range. Then, like many adults, I lost touch with it. My life back then was wonderful and average. I was happy, but I wasn’t whole. But if I didn’t do something, I knew the part of me that was missing would be gone forever.
One quiet and cold early November morning 13 years ago, I woke up slowly. I made spicy chai tea, wiped a skin of frost from the window, and realized that an essential component of who I was as a kid was no longer a part of who I was as an adult.
As a child, I was quite free-range. I spent all day outside. I was happiest with dirt on the bottom of my feet, my hair in a two-day-old ponytail, and cold morning air in my lungs. My connection to the natural world was instant and effortless. I understood my place in the larger ecosystem, and I felt a deep sense of belonging.
Then, like many adults, I lost touch with it. It wasn’t an intentional decision, or even a conscious one, but at some point, being outside ceased to be a vital part of my day.
My life back then was wonderful and average. I had a fulfilling career in advertising. I was often on the road, traveling for commercial shoots and client meetings. I had a healthy family with two growing boys, and a sparkly collection of friends. But during those decades, I spent most of my time indoors, in conference rooms, in meetings, on planes, in the house, in the office, in the kitchen, in cars. I was happy, but I wasn’t whole.
No wise or elegant words arrived to help me convey what I was feeling that November morning. All I could say was all that I knew something was missing. I remember reading a quote from Georgia O’Keeffe about the reason she painted, and the gist of it was: I don't know how to say how I feel, but I do know how to paint how I feel. That’s what being outside is like for me. I couldn’t be myself or know myself without nature as my teacher and companion.
But 13 years ago, there was little about self-care, especially for women. Or probably more accurately, I wasn’t aware of it. As a mother, putting yourself before others was at best, rebellious, and at worst, selfish.
But if I didn’t do something, I knew the part of me that was missing would be gone forever.
So, the next morning, I got up in the dark before the world had woken; I put on my shoes and went for a walk. It was a beautiful and chilly reunion with me. I promised myself that I’d get up early every morning and go for a 60-min walk, no matter what.
That first week was wobbly, uncertain, dark, cold—and joyous.
I’ve walked in the snow, in the rain, on bright, sunny mornings, with all the wild birdsong accompanying me.
It’s been 13 years since I made my walking promise, and I’ve never missed a day. Most days, it’s very simple: out my backdoor by 5:30 a.m., walk for an hour. A few years ago, walking alongside my sons, I calculated that over the course of these many mornings, I’d traveled the circumference of the Earth.
After more than a decade on foot, I’ve seen much of it, too. I’ve walked in the great cities of the world and in the Badlands, which are not bad at all.
There was a walk in Hornstrandir, a remote protected nature reserve located in the Westfjords of Iceland, about six hours from Reykivik, where I hiked with a group of 15 women over tundra, cliffs, flowering fields, and ice. We were hosting “The World's Most Remote Film Festival” for 10 days, off the grid. (If you’re wondering how it’s possible to host a film festival off the grid, the short answer is … very creatively.)
I was overwhelmed by the steep cliffs, the darkness of the dark, and the brilliance of the light.
Claire cheered me on as my 62-year-old eyes or inner ear or equilibrium faltered on the switchbacks, with a steep cliff on one side. Bradlee kept her hand on my pack, tender but steadfast in her care of me. In each step, we made a promise of love to ourselves and each other.
Once, at home, I walked all night long through my community on the North Shore. I’d received some upsetting news late that evening at the office, a tectonic shift in my life and my family’s. I walked what I’d come to call “the Loop,” five miles around the neighborhood and through the woods. And that night—through grief, anger, and uncertainty. I asked myself after each circuit, “Do you want to keep going? Do you need a hot shower, a cup of tea, a call with a friend, new socks, a hug?” What I needed was to keep walking. I walked until morning, 13 hours in total. My walking practice held space for me, but what I came to realize was that my walking practice also had me.
My favorite walk on the West Coast is an out-and-back on a dirt road that ends with the kiss of the Pacific Ocean. I take a gentle, sunny slope down to the water, pausing briefly in the shade of the eucalyptus trees and bay laurel, which are so fragrant it feels as if I’m wrapped in my father’s arms. In this sacred space, you might find a bobkitten as I once did, which causes you to stop, not in fear, but in wonder. She might be surprised to see you there—or she might not—because you’re part of her ecosystem, her homecoming, too.
This walking practice is not about the number of steps or the number of miles. It’s about the intention, the action, and the promise. I don’t know where I’d be if I hadn’t started to walk, but I wouldn’t have gotten far.
Libby DeLana is an award-winning executive creative director, designer/art director by trade, who has spent her career in the ad world. Click here to get your copy of Libby’s first published book, Do Walk. You can connect with Libby on Instagram @thismorningwalk and @parkhere.
WALK in the Woods
I found something in the forest that I once lost. It was hanging on spider silk and dripping with the sun. It was tucked into the palm of a young leaf. It was a secret shared between birds that somehow, I understood perfectly. Urgently. I walked and I walked. Impossibly, I understood more and deeper.
“The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.”
― John Muir
I found something in the forest that I once lost.
It was hanging on spider silk and dripping with the sun.
It was tucked into the palm of a young leaf.
It was a secret shared between birds that somehow, I understood perfectly. Urgently.
I walked and I walked. Impossibly, I understood more and deeper.
In my years of walking through the woods, I’ve made many observations. Among them, that people in a forest always seem to know that walking is best.
If you stand still, you miss it.
If you run, you miss it.
But if you walk, your curiosity will show you everything.
You’ll notice the frilled mushrooms terraced and cascading down the trunk of an oak tree.
You’ll see that the mother bird has the same color freckles as your firstborn.
You’ll stop for a drink of fresh air, because a simple breath won’t tell you enough about where you’re standing.
You can come here with a hungry heart. In fact, it’s best that you do.
Walk and keep walking.
Because on the stained purple boughs of the mulberry, behind the curtain of willow, in this gallery where seasons change loudly but peace stays the same, this is where they hang the great art:
The particular blackness in the eyes of a doe frozen still.
A squabble among squirrels.
Pine cones looking prehistoric in their armor and scales.
The cocoon, the canopy, the small flashes of light.
The presence of medicine and nourishment, abundance.
Sharing the trail with the bobcat. She walks towards and past you as if to say, “I trust you, welcome.”
I’ll never be uninterested in one step more.
I’ve heard people say that they found God, Spirit, Source, the answers here. Others have been just as excited about fox grapes and Lion’s Mane. People have found love in and with these woods. They have become cathedral-quiet, just so they can listen.
They have walked so that they can really see.
Practices
Shinrin-Yoku or “Forest Bathing”
I often feel that “forest” is as much a feeling as a place. Forest is calm, peace, and home. Forest is holiness, humility, and awe. It feels good to walk in the woods because it is good to walk in the woods. Of course, we don’t need scientific studies to confirm this magic, but we have them in volumes. Among many other benefits, spending time in the forest has been associated with lower blood pressure, stress hormones, and heart rate.
In 1982, as a response to rapid urbanization and declines in overall health, the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries introduced the concept of shinrin-yoku or “forest bathing.” The wild idea was that spending dedicated time in the woods, taking in the environment with the five senses, could offer therapeutic and preventative health benefits. Today, according to the Japanese Society of Forest Medicine there are 65 certified “Forest Therapy Bases” across the country and the practice is catching on all over the world.
Like most of my favorite exercises, forest bathing is open-ended, adaptable, personalizable, and accessible. All you need is time and attention. In my experience, the woods do the rest of the work for you.
I begin my practice still, with several deep breaths and then move slowly and intentionally along a quiet two-mile trail, a distance that works well for me and takes roughly thirty-five minutes. As I walk, I make sure I’m observing with all five of my senses:
I see the light filtered through the stand of young conifers (this is called ‘komorebi’ 木漏れ日.)
I taste the spice of sap in the air.
I smell the damp earth, covered with pine needles.
I feel the zephyr skip playfully over my skin and through my hair.
I listen to every crackle and song.
I let all of it wash over me and it really does feel that way. I’m immersed, embodied, intrinsically connected. When I’m finished, I close my practice in the same stillness from which it began. And I always say, “thank you.”
Starting something new, even considering starting something new, can be daunting. If it feels like a big step (as first steps often do) there are guided forest bathing practices all over the US led by certified forest therapists, as well as many established and emerging enthusiast groups that may be able to help you get going.
Right now, I’m enjoying the practice in my own company (always making sure to check in at the trailhead, keep others aware of my location, and bring proper safety gear). As Mary Oliver says, “If you have ever gone to the woods with me, I must love you very much.”
Libby DeLana is an award-winning executive creative director, designer/art director by trade, who has spent her career in the ad world. Click here to get your copy of Libby’s first published book, Do Walk. You can connect with Libby on Instagram @thismorningwalk and @parkhere.
WALK on the Beach
I’ve come here troubled and desperate; I’ve come brimming with joy. I have come searching intensely for things I can’t name, and on days when I’ve wanted for nothing. The ocean has never given me bad advice. “Keep going,” it says as it reaches for my ankles and turns eleven new kinds of blue in the distance, “Keep on.”
The beach is pale and severed by a stream of brackish water, sea brine and fresh water flowing back and forth from a coastal dune lake to the ocean. There are tall grasses and humps of sand as big as whales, amphibious-looking plants that seem as though they could live life on a reef, a roadside, or the dark side of the moon. Stubby beach elder, panic grass, and a kind of morning glory I’ve never seen anywhere else all smile at me from behind a string of wooden fence that has been draped over the dunes like they’re sleeping children, a little “Keep Off” sign standing guard nearby, a gesture, after decades of severe weather and impact, to show that the people are trying to make amends to their places.
I walk here because I like the way the gulls sound.
I walk here because the water makes my toes wrinkle, turning the soles of my feet to a hide of soft leather.
I walk here because, like me, the beach is always changing. And there is so much wisdom in what will never profess to be finished.
I walk here because the fragrance transports me to magic land.
I step down barefoot from a rotting wooden step onto hot, almost-liquid sand. There’s no way to avoid crossing outfall today, which is knee-deep and murky with strange pockets of hot and cold. A swirl of panicked minnows circles my ankles when I step in, and I notice how different the conduit is now than it was twenty-two hours prior. There are no more shallow points, and the water is moving quickly, rushing through a network of just born capillaries in the sand that could easily be gone by sunset.
People in various configurations—singles, couples, families—mill around wonderfully aimless. Most have come to shut their eyes, to bask and be still, two things I can do nearly anywhere but here. There is something so special to me about a place that seems to believe as I do that we are continually shaped by movement. I smile as I wade across, watching a trio of little girls with pink shovels dig for treasure and drag their butterfly kites behind them, unable or unwilling to wait another second on the wind.
I have walked this beach and others like it for years, listening in on the conversations between long-legged birds, letting the sand slough away the skin on my feet, amazed by how it can be so different every time and still so much like home. I’ve come here troubled and desperate; I’ve come brimming with joy. I have come searching intensely for things I can’t name, and on days when I’ve wanted for nothing. The ocean has never given me bad advice. “Keep going,” it says as it reaches for my ankles and turns eleven new kinds of blue in the distance, “Keep on.”
And invariably I do, through the changes in and around me, walking more with the beach than on it and into my prerogative to erode, evolve, birth, and be birthed over and over. “The ocean is a mighty harmonist,” as Wordsworth says, and a very good walking companion, too.
In every movement, each crashing wave, there is transformation. It’s what keeps me walking, every damn day, and what draws me to salt-soaked and sacred spaces like this one, an environment with a pulse of its own, that reaches for me, and is as never-the-same, as I am. Up ahead, a plover searches the sand with her nose and loses a few gray tufts of feathers, gently reminding me that we can shed our feathers with a single step forward.
After six slow miles, with lots of stops to scout for sand dollars and perfectly tousled beach stones, I walk back through the outfall and find a shallow path through the stream that either wasn’t there before or wasn’t noticeable to me. I smile at the idea that the beach has done this on my behalf, though I doubt it. I say goodbye to the sleeping sand giants and their flower crowns, glad that they’re being watched over. I say goodbye to the girls pulling their wilted kites along like dawdling little sisters. “Keep going,” I think, “Walk on.”
Libby DeLana is an award-winning executive creative director, designer/art director by trade, who has spent her career in the ad world. Click here to get your copy of Libby’s first published book, Do Walk. You can connect with Libby on Instagram @thismorningwalk and @parkhere.
Lost and Found
I found something in the forest that I once lost.
It was hanging on spider silk and dripping with the sun.
It was tucked into the palm of a young leaf.
It was a secret shared between birds that somehow, I understood perfectly. Urgently.
I found something in the forest that I once lost.
It was hanging on spider silk and dripping with the sun.
It was tucked into the palm of a young leaf.
It was a secret shared between birds that somehow, I understood perfectly. Urgently.
I walked and I walked. Impossibly, I understood more and deeper.
In my years of walking through the woods, I’ve made many observations. Among them, that people in a forest always seem to know that walking is best.
If you stand still, you miss it.
If you run, you miss it.
But if you walk, your curiosity will show you everything.
Libby DeLana is an award-winning executive creative director, designer/art director by trade, who has spent her career in the ad world. Click here to get your copy of Libby’s first published book, Do Walk. You can connect with Libby on Instagram @thismorningwalk and @parkhere.
No Longer Playing Small
There were times when I used to play small and shrink in order to make sure people in my life felt ok. Walking shifted that. On one windy, cold, icy morning, I became curious. Why do I do this? How is this behavior helping/supporting me?
There were times when I used to play small and shrink in order to make sure people in my life felt ok. Walking shifted that. On one windy, cold, icy morning, I became curious. Why do I do this? How is this behavior helping/supporting me? Or anyone else, for that matter. Now, don’t get me wrong, I want the people around me to feel ok. And. I want to show up whole, abundant, and true.
Playing small. What do I mean? Because actually, I am 5’ 12”. I believe it means that we avoid actions we think might cause a problem or make someone else feel uncomfortable. Our culture teaches us from a very young age to be quiet, hide our accomplishments, and keep our opinions to ourselves. There's plenty of shame out there for taking up space, being heard and seen. Why? Really, why?
I think we often feel fear when stepping out of our comfort zone. This is where walking comes in. Getting comfortable with the uncomfortable. The days when it is pouring rain—those days are teachers. It’s uncomfortable. But at the end of the day, it is just rain. What I have learned on those days is patience, and being with/in the discomfort. It passes, the discomfort. What remains is a truer understanding of our place, or strength, ourselves. We just have to allow for some discomfort and quiet to teach us. Walking is that teacher for me.
Libby DeLana is an award-winning executive creative director, designer/art director by trade, who has spent her career in the ad world. Click here to get your copy of Libby’s first published book, Do Walk. You can connect with Libby on Instagram @thismorningwalk and @parkhere.