One of the countless blessings I know in this life is the ability to put my feet to the ground and propel my body over the earth. It was not until an accident temporarily took away my ability to walk that I fully realized that my legs and their movements were not promises but blessings. The 13 years since my accident have been filled with walks that have ultimately led to a more intimate relationship with my days and the earth.
To move slowly from place to place can be an act of conscious communication with the environment that surrounds you. My footsteps become part of the breeze and I hear them come together and blow away! Instead of passively moving through a landscape in a whirl of noise and speed, I am an active participant adding the noise of my steps to the surroundings. My heartbeat is as present in my ears as the sound of the birds, cars, and wind. When I walk I can frequently quiet my mind, which is sometimes a good thing to do, and take my place in the living community that surrounds me. There is so much life around!
Since I started going to USM in the fall of 2001, I have often walked from my room on Peaks Island to the boat and then from the Casco Bay Lines terminal in Portland to the USM Portland campus. My walks are different everyday according to the cycle of the tide, the time, the season, and the mood of the sky. While on the Island, I sometimes walk along the water’s edge where gulls drop shells to the rocks below, hoping to obtain a meal. Other days, I walk on the street and watch as the leaves change color, drift from the branches, and finally touch the ground only to appear again in the slow intervals of spring.
Once in Portland, my legs move me past the fire boat, fishing vessels, and stray cats haunting the area around the Harbor Fish Market. Other commuters, on foot and in cars, move in their own direction or share mine. I ascend the earth that is Portland to Congress Street and move down toward the Portland campus. I walk through the Bayside neighborhood examining its plethora of human and scenic diversity. There are old homes with lifelong residents, immigrants and refugees, community gardens, an industrial brownfield, homeless shelters and soup kitchens, abandoned railroad tracks, and seldom walked cobbled streets. Sometimes I walk through the Old Port to the eastern section of the West End then cut up, over, and down toward Deering Oaks Park to walk on the ice in winter or watch the rose garden come to life in spring!
I have walked through Portland in the dawn, during the sunrise when the streets are mostly silent, in the bustle of a mid-week, mid-day hour, while the red bricks of Portland absorbed and reflected the light of the setting sun, during the easy feel of twilight, and all the phases of the moon. My walks are ordinary and sacred in the same stride.
The beauty of it is that I am a human being filled with all the glories, contradictions, confusions, loves, aspirations, failures, hopes, comedies, and joys that humans have felt for millennia. I take all my attributes with me when I walk and am comfortable with how common I am and how special I am. We all make a difference in this world just by being alive. I encourage you, if you are able, to put your keys in your pocket, your feet on the ground, and move!
David Emery can be contacted at [email protected]