Theatre of revival

By Conrad Beaubien

Solvitur ambulando—‘it is solved by walking’: an expression from Roman times that I adopted and stashed in the top drawer of my emotional bank a number of years ago. It’s proven to be effective in my experience. I think of it as a ready antidote to offset malaise and the pondering of stuff while sitting on my butt.

When things go beyond the need to problem solve, walking can be an ever-ready balm to help endure heartbreak and trauma. It’s about calming the heart, literally regulating heart rate; no matter where, walking is about nurturing spirit and prompting creative imagination.

There are volumes in print and in various media on the topic of walking. Apparently the trend began in 4 million BC when our species evolved to two-legged walking, which freed up the hands for tool making and good on them that they foresaw the eventual need for texting.

Various strands of perspectives converge into a holistic view of how walking can be a catalyst for mental and physical well-being: Importantly, realizing the rewards of walking also goes hand-in-hand with the acknowledgement that these simple freedoms are not available to a large segment of population where social/cultural/religious barriers exist; reasons of safety such as war zones or people who use mobility devices can be affected.

The first travel guide—Colex Calixinus— was published to promote the pilgrimages of Camino de Santiago, referred to in English as the Way, in northern Spain. The walks are more popular today than ever.

Eight to ten thousand years ago North American native people made and wore sandals; in 100 A.D. the Roman Emperor Hadrian toured his whole empire on foot marching 21 miles a day – in full armour no less! I think it was the foot soldiers who left notes behind reminding anyone that dared to follow that 1000 military paces (a pace is two steps) equalled a Roman mile: likely because the soldiers took turns doing the math. Apparently a caravan of shoemakers followed.

So these days I compensate for isolation by reacquainting myself with donkey friends of the past, Thunder and Joe. Together the three of us hatched a plan that honours their historic role of travelling the land. In the face of the challenges that everyone is currently enduring with coronavirus and all, plus the added factor of oncoming winter and further isolation, the donkeys and I have decided to walk into the face of challenge; literally walk following our Millennium Trail as a starter.

Thunder is first up for our walks, and Joe will follow later. Let’s just simply walk, we agreed, and see what happens. Who knows, maybe imitator Bottom from A Midsummer Night’s Dream may appear. A weaver by trade, Nick Bottom is famously known for getting his head transformed into that of a donkey by the elusive Puck. But as Shakespeare’s young Athenian asserts: Although “the course of true love never did run smooth,” true love triumphs in the end, bringing happiness and harmony; in the case of Walking with Thunder it’s about love of the people and of the land and waters that surround.

As Thunder and I walk, one of the things I find myself thinking about is how the act of walking has historically influenced the writing of poems. There is a celebrated connection between landscape and poetry that runs through the works of the English ‘walking poets’. For example iambic pentameter is a type of metric line used in traditional English poetry and verse drama. Shakespeare made constant use of it as a rhythm, which is measured in small groups of syllables called feet. While some relate the rhythm to that of the heartbeat, I hear it in terms of a chosen pace of walking with one soft foot and one strong foot repeated five times in a verse. Now add four donkey feet to that and it becomes a whole new game of je ne sais pas quoi.

Since the M-trail, as I’m sometime apt to call it, is a former railway line laid out through the landscape I imagine that if trains provide an insistent, regular rhythm and a sense of moving at speed through space and time, then surely the poetry of walking must be slower, more leisurely and somehow grounded by the physical contact of foot on earth and the effort and relief provided by incline and decline.

I also think of the children’s poet, the 19th century American, James Whitcomb Riley. His pace allows the imagination time for some perhaps unexpected experiences along the way, including meetings with singing bushes, false knights, with dancing rabbits. Riley’s verse is simple in language with common phrases of the common experiences of childhood, of the rhythm of the seasons and of children’s play. Knee deep in June, September Dark, When the Frost is on the Pumpkin, and Old October are fun to read to my grandchildren.

To walk is to experience an environment at first hand, an intimate connection between movement and senses like what Thomas Traherne sang in his poem Walking. It’s also a major theme in the works of Walt Whitman. His sense of the liberating power of strolling runs through most of his writing with Song of the Open Road a classic. In a poem called The Wood-Pile, Robert Frost reminds us of the great crisis point of so many walks, that moment when we have to decide whether to forge ahead or turn back towards home: Many of the undertones of poetry that are walking/landscape driven offer possibilities that may occur when we step outside our door to walk in the world.

But most importantly, out here on the trail I find a re-appreciation of the human delight in engaging with nature, of being fascinated by the way that millions of small creatures given time can change the face of the earth: Also that this season can also be a season, a stage play in the theatre of revival.

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