Walking Across The Universe

I have never learned how to drive.  I have never learned how to swim.  I have never learned how to ride a bike.  Wow.  Anyone reading this must be thinking, What is wrong with the poor bugger?  What kind of life has he had?  He hasn't had a life. I know that at first glance this admission seems quite pathetic.  It has always been a cause of embarrassment that these things, these fundamental rights of passage through childhood into adolescence and adulthood have never occurred to me.  Yet, when people meet me, not knowing any of these three little details about me, they all seem to assume that I have led a rich, full and interesting life.  And, you know, I have, barring those three little details.
     I remember when my mom enrolled me in swimming lessons.  I somehow could never convince my body to float and naturally I feared drowning so whenever I let go of the edge of the pool or the supportive instructor I would fly into a panic, thrash around like a hooked carp and grab for the first solid object of support, usually the upper body of the poor instructor.  I think I was eleven then or twelve.  It didn't really feel like a great loss at the time because I was not crazy about the public pool and swimming only seemed like a good idea because Mom was so intent on selling me on it.  She was never on hand to watch, coach, support or teach me however.  She didn't know herself how to swim, though she would never admit it, simply mumbling and fumbling that she could maybe swim a little, and didn't seem interested in learning.  Likewise my father.  I think maybe he could swim a bit but obviously did not care whether I did or not, and besides, he was absent all summer on his fishing boat.
     I felt the same pressure from Mom to learn how to ride a bike.  This was in the sixties, when only kids went around on bicycles.  If you were sixteen or older you were expected to drive.  Bicycles as a popular form of transportation only began to come into vogue in the early Seventies.  I always had trouble balancing on a bike and somehow could not comfortably go fast enough in order to keep it upright.  In my few lame attempts I kept falling down and didn't feel I'd ever get anywhere.  I was, and still am, naturally slow, and even though my reflexes are normal I still don't do speed at all well.  Where were my parents and my big brother at the time?  Well, your guess is as good as mine.
     When I was seventeen and living for four upsetting months with my dad, who worked in an auto body shop as well as being a commercial fisherman, had a used car, a Ford Falcon to get rid of and offered it to me if I would learn how to drive.  I can't remember if he offered to teach me or not but for all sorts of reasons then, some of them unknown to me at the time, my old man creeped the bejesus out of me (I was at that time in complete total denial about the sexual abuse).  There is another reason I turned down his offer.  I didn't want to be like him.  I wanted nothing to do with cars which in my view guzzled fossil fuels and polluted the air, and yes, even at the tender age of seventeen in 1973 I was part of the vanguard of the environmental movement.
     I learned none of the approved modes of transportation.  I was a walker, a pedestrian, a hiker.  I walked everywhere.  I loved it.  Sole of foot touching the ground.  Of course a more grounding experience than any, and yes, I loved the grounding experience of walking.  In the summers when I was seventeen and eighteen I often went barefoot, despite the discomfort, especially walking on gravel and beach rocks, but the need to touch the earth with the skin of the bottom of my feet was something very important to me.  I still don't understand why and perhaps here there is no why that needs to be understood.
     Walking everywhere, as well as providing me with splendid exercise, has taken me places that I would not have seen from a car.  It has enabled me to pause, to watch, see, observe, listen and hear.  All the details surrounding me have become emblazoned in my long-term memory: old houses, their colour, details of stain and prism glass, verandas, windows, the colour of the paint that covers them, special trees, gardens, flowers (whether a special patch of purple crocuses in February

 or delphiniums and poppies in June)

, certain birds, people, friendly cats and dogs, tiny but painfully lovely neighbourhood parks.  This Anna's Hummingbird I have seen twice this week in different neighbourhoods and likely different birds because I happen to walk everywhere.

 I still feel often like a tourist in this city I have always called home because my proclivity for walking often takes me into places I have never seen or places that I still learn to see anew each time I visit.  I have become much more aware of birds and of the plethora of lovely beautifully coloured birds this city harbours that almost no one seems to know about.
     I travel internationally, and if I were to sequester myself in an all-inclusive resort, or a tour bus, or a rented or hired car, I would have had absolutely none of the quotidian pleasures of walking quietly and prayerfully in the streets and parks of London, Salisbury, Edinburgh, Amsterdam, Brussells, Cologne, Mexico City, San Cristobal de las Casas, Monteverde, Costa Rica and other places.  To immerse myself in the environment and savour and absorb the life of the host city, country and people.  Perhaps unsafe at times and a little too vulnerable, but life is at times unsafe and if we do not allow ourselves to become vulnerable then we are never truly alive!
     I am a natural contemplative.  I have to go slow, at a human pace, if I am to feel fully myself, fully human.  I am a natural listener, to nature, to God, the Spirit, to others, to my own breathing and heartbeat and the birds and voices that surround me.  Moving too fast breaks my focus and then for a while I have lost that most important part of me, what Doris Lessing referred to as an interior soft receptive darkness.  For those of you who can run, swim, drive and bike without suffering this loss I say more power to you.  But please do not judge me as your inferior just because I have left aside your opportunities of fastness and speed to take a slow and beautiful walk across the Universe.