Walking (and writing) as a way of life

WALKABOUT TOWN

The gates become a familiar sight at New Mexico’s Rancho Jacona when you’re at a writing retreat.

The point is to write at a writing retreat, although the walking can help. PATRICE VECCHIONE — HERALD CORRESPONDENT

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With gratitude to Rancho Jacona’s Guadalupe Vanchailk.

If you live in New York City or in another of many cities, walking is a way of life. In Manhattan, at least it used to be. I’ve not lived there since I was 8 and that was more than a few years ago. How clearly, I recall my mother grabbing my little girl hand, looking both ways across a wide avenue, and saying, “Come on! Let’s make the light.” I’m certain my patent leathers didn’t touch the asphalt from one sidewalk to the next. The last time I was there and my feet were sturdy, by day’s end, I clocked over 10 miles without even trying. Rural dwellers too are known to be walkers, but suburban ones, not so much, not from necessity, anyway.

Recently, I spent a week at a country retreat center about 30 minutes north of Santa Fe, New Mexico, not far from the San Ildefonso Pueblo. There 20 people joined me for a writing retreat, offered through the Osher Program at Cal State Monterey Bay. I’ve been leading these nearly-annual retreats for many years. We’ve gone to Bell Valley in Mendocino, Cave Creek in Arizona, a center outside of Santa Barbara, and in 2015, we traveled also to New Mexico, that time to Taos and Abiquiu. During my previous New Mexico retreat, we got caught in a late spring snowstorm, reveling in the surprise and beauty of it. This time, there was no snow, though, upon arrival, we were greeted by a sudden, drenching rainstorm. Both times, I was taken by the sky’s presence is, how much bigger it appeared to be in a place with fewer trees, less cluttered by close-together buildings and an abundance of paved roads.

Set between the Sangre de Chisto and Jemez mountain ranges, Rancho Jacona (rancho meaning a gathering of houses) is comprised of 12, mostly small, adobe houses — casitas — some having been built in the 1700s, that dot the 35-acre property, bordered to the north by the Pojoaqua River. The property straddles both sides of a country road. We stayed on one side of that road and held our classes there, but meals were served in a large house less than a quarter of a mile up and across the road.

Because our workshops met each morning and evening, that meant a bit of going back and forth. Those of us able-bodied enough walked back and forth a couple of times each day while others had to drive. And for the regular readers of this column, you know, due to my pesky left foot, I’m not exactly able-bodied, but my last surgery being nearly three months behind me, most times I was able to get to and fro without getting behind the wheel. And when hungry for dinner, everyone found their pace a little brisker than the way back.

I noticed that by virtue of being in an unfamiliar place and doing this frequent back and forth by foot, whether in pain or not, my five, actually, six senses became more alert, more in tune to the environment. I became excited by all there was to experience: breeze rustling through the cottonwood trees, the loamy scent of heat beginning to bake the red clay earth each morning, nighttime crickets aplenty singing in unison, and loudly, also loud was the bleating of the baby goat who was accidentally separated from her mother. There the roosters crow but not only in the morning. Each day I plunged into the unheated swimming pool. OK, “plunged” is a wishful exaggeration, but I did slowly immerse myself and spend about 30 minutes going back and forth until I forgot the water was cold and then out into the heat of the afternoon. Had I not been moving in the elements, I don’t think I’d have been as attentive to it all as I got to be.

Writing creatively, I’ve come to realize is kind of like walking. You begin in one place, take in the sights and sounds along the way, and end up somewhere you couldn’t have known the particularities of upon setting off. And though writing is a solitary endeavor, doing it in community provides a kind of energy, a sixth sense. One person’s creativity has the capacity to infiltrate another’s hesitancy. All these heads bowed, pens writing fast as possible or slowly forming one word then the next feeds us. Having done this work with both adults and children for nearly 50 years, it never ceases to invigorate and delight me. Together we write what we likely wouldn’t have written alone.

The act of stepping out into the air, of one leg extending ahead of me before my foot touches down on the reliable but new ground enlivened me, rekindling the desire to be surrounded by the beautiful unpredictable, and that was true whether walking on the country road alone or beside curious-hearted writers. It makes feeling propelled forward not just an emotional thing but one that’s kinesthetic. At my age, it’s expected that I’d spend much of my time looking backward and though that does entice me, still, I’m on a forward trajectory, one grateful step at a time either here at home or in new and inviting places.