2021

In July 2020, five months into the pandemic, I began to build time for walking into every day. It was a commitment to emotional, spiritual, and physical health in a time of pandemic. Instead of sitting in a car on the Mass Pike for two hours each day, I'd walk. 

Since then, over the past eighteen months, I've walked over 3,100 miles: basically from Boston to San Francisco. Most of those miles were on the Central Mass Rail Trail, from West Boylston to Holden, and then back again. 

One year ago - six months into this practice - I resolved on January 1, 2021 that I would walk the number of miles in this year (2021) which is roughly 5.6 miles a day. I wrote about that here. As of today, I have achieved and surpassed that goal, with three days left in the year. 

As I said, it's been a commitment to emotional, spiritual, and physical health. It's a way to be outside even in the short days of a New England winter. Most of the time I walk in the morning. I've walked with family and friends and even made a couple of new friends. I've run into people I have known for years. But most of those miles have been on my own. It's been a practice of putting first things first and of paying attention. To paraphrase Mary Oliver, I may not know what a  prayer is, but I do know how to pay attention. The truth is that's a big part of prayer. 

I plan, God willing, to keep walking in 2022. Since I like having goals and since I'm a visual person, I'm going to try to walk the distance of the Appalachian Trail in 2022. It means stepping it up a bit, since the distance from Springer Mountain in Georgia to Mount Katahdin in Maine is about 2200 miles. That will require a little more than six miles a day I'll have a three-month sabbatical in 2022. I hope to put in some miles in The Holy Land this May and then in Spain in October. I'd also like to figure out how to walk at least a few miles that are actually on the AT, at least where it comes through Massachusetts in the Berkshires. But mostly I anticipate walking most of those miles on the rail trail. See you out there!