“And it’s no surprise that, you know, when people embark on pilgrimage, it’s often on foot, right, down through the ages. I think there is this connection between the body and the mind and landscape at this speed. I remind myself, I think it’s delightful that we are this wondrous walking machine. We have evolved to set one foot in front of the other. We are exquisitely tuned to do this. And so when you do it—even if you live in downtown Manhattan or in Shanghai—and you are busy and distracted—walking feels good. Whenever you’re stressed, what do you do? You get out of the office and you go take a walk, even around the block. If you need to talk to somebody intimately about something important, what do you say? You say, let’s go take a walk. So I think that this sense of well-being that comes with timelessness, the sense of being at peace—it must be very, very old. And it must be like a stylus dropping into a groove on the surface of a planet and making this music. And we are, our bodies are, that stylus, and we’re meant to move at this RPM that comes with the movement of our body. And it just feels natural. It just feels good…You do not have to, you know, make your way to the jungles of northeastern India to experience this thing. I think it’s there for you. And it might be a little tougher to see and experience if it’s part of your daily life, whether you’re living in a small town or a megalopolis or anything in between, because, as usual, if we stay sedentary, we get scales over our eyes, and we stop realizing the wonders of the everyday world around us because they become over familiar. But walking peels those scales off and allows you to rediscover the extraordinariness of so-called ordinary things. And that includes a walk through your town, a stroll out into the fields, or a park near your house—indeed, your backyard, if you choose to go micro, right?And I think we all know of friends and colleagues who incorporate a little walking into their commute, right? Let’s say you have to jump on a metro, but you walk to and from the metro, or during your lunch hour, you take a spin around the park and sit in the park. I think these micro-migrations are just as potent and valid, if we can access them. It would help if there’s a little quiet that you’re walking through or to, but you can access this goodness that’s kind of humming in our bones, waiting to be let out.”

by Paul Salopek (as seen here)

(Read about Paul Salopek’s 38,000-kilometer decade-long walk here.)