The values of a walk with no set path
Today I realized that despite living where I am for half a year, I had not yet explored. I had just watched a Bettina Levy video on why taking a moment to be bored was important for ADHD, and decided to do some things, notably, taking out the trash and getting the mail, things that didn't really require any mental or physical energy.
However, by the time I was walking out the door I realized that I wasn't just going to do chores. In between throwing the little trash in the dumpster and getting the mail, I was going to go on a walk. I had been living here for half a year and yet I barely had any of the neighborhood mapped out in my head. And so I explored, following wherever my whims took me.
I quickly began noticing things I hadn't before. Despite walking to the office to pick up my mail so many times before, I had never noticed the brick pattern outside the office. I had never noticed that there was a sharp downward incline past the trees on the other side of the basketball court's fence.
So I went to the other side and found a parking area but I noticed what I initially thought was a path into the forest. As I walked it, however, I noticed that it opened up into a closed area that wasn't more than 5 meters square. It almost couldn't be seen because of all the trees growing around it. I wondered what this used to be before it was abandoned. Was it a place for games? Just to sit down and bird watch? Was there a fire pit in the middle to roast marshmallows and tell stories?
For a while after that I just walked around the other buildings when I noticed that there was a wide but thin backyard between one of the buildings and the forest, and decided that when coming back, I would go through it. It was by then when I realized I had forgotten a crucial skill, the ability to wander.
At one point I saw an opening into the forest and something within my longed to explore the area, but when I realized how loose the ground is, I realized I would need to come back at another time in shoes and pants smore suited to exploration.
As I walked back I took new routes that turned out to be harder. I could tell that what I was doing was functioning as pretty good cardio, and was maybe even better exercise than the jogs in laps my headmate had been taking.
When I made it to the backyard I wanted to walk through I realized there was a grown over dirt road into the forest, and I wanted to see what was there. An abandoned mansion? An older office building? Another path into town? More buildings? However, at some point I realized it was probably a long path, and that I should probably explore it at a later time considering how dangerous the forest was.
Walking up the path I was focused on what was in front of me, but walking back I was focused on what was off the path and was stunned by how beautiful it was. I saw a place things lived, I saw a place people didn't walk through, I saw a place people might have thought fae danced hundreds of years ago.
Heading to the office for the mail now I took another alternate route through a packet of trees and realized that as a kid this is a place I would have loved to play pretend, and kids today even might have.
So I picked up my mail and as I walked back to my apartment I realized why I had forgotten how to wander. As a kid wandering for the sake of wandering was natural, just wanting to see what was behind every bush and turn, but as I grew older it suddenly had a purpose. At first it was just to find potentially faster routes to wherever I was going, then as I got a little older I didn't have time to wonder. I was often stuck inside being told to improve grades I couldn't affect as I was, or if not that, escaping reality through fiction. A little more time passed and suddenly wandering wasn't just something I could do, but needed to do. I needed to find a job and wondering to find a new business that might hire me, and when I had one, wandering had served its purpose and I didn't do it again until I lost that job through one way or another, and by this time doing it to find a faster route wasn't necessary either because I could just use my phone.
But then some friends decided to let me live with them no strings attached, and really was too far from town for wandering to find a job, when I was in a pinch, which is how I came to live where I do now, and I had not wandered since until today.
I think I'm going to take some more time to wander every once in a while again and find those places where kids today might play, and where fae hundreds of years ago might have danced, because honestly, I can't say much more about it, than it feels good to.
