My year of walking daily

and how it made me feel safe again

Without planning to I’ve walked over 3,500 kilometers in the last twelve months. I wear a Fitbit, and when I came across that number a few days ago I was surprised. ‘Huh, it really adds up, doesn’t it,’ I thought to myself. There’s a lesson in there about consistency and showing up for yourself, but that’s not what I want to talk about. What I want to tell you is how much walking daily has changed my perception of - well, everything: my relationship, the world, life, work, safety, and beauty.

Like many of us, I haven’t felt safe since 2020. The world has always been unsafe in many parts, but in my corner it was mostly safe until 2020 happened. In addition to the pandemic my little town had to also endure fires and floods in 2021, evacuations at work and at home, and I had my personal crisis to deal with. (My book goes into everything in detail.)

I’ve always walked a lot, but for years I had to commute to work, adding close to three hours (more in the winter) to the work day. By the time I got home I was usually too beat to go for a long walk. But a little over a year ago I got a job in my home town, and I took the extra free time and my dogs into the woods.
I also brought a lot of baggage along. My anxieties and fears, my frustrations from work, my hurt and disappointments. I shed many tears in those woods, letting them drip freely onto the dusty ground, screaming the unfairness of the world into the trees. My hip started hurting early on, then my foot started swelling.
I kept on walking.
My exercise-enduced asthma was giving me a hard time in the beginning, making me wheeze and rattle.
I kept on walking.

Because on every single one of my walks through the woods, the burden I was carrying got a little bit lighter. Breathing in the fresh air blew the dark thoughts away. Watching my dogs love the present moment with such enthusiastic joy was contagious and made me love it, too. Being out there with them made my heart sing after it hadn’t sung for years.

After a while my foot got better. My wheezing lessened. My hip stopped aching. And along with my physical ailments, my mental health improved. I took all my problems into the woods and presented them to the trees. One by one, solutions started to present themselves. Never right away - sometimes it took months. But slowly, I gained much-needed perspective. I felt small compared to the trees, which made my troubles seem small, too. It was a relief.

I found compassion again in those woods, an understanding for the inherently flawed human condition that I had lost in the chaos of the last few years. I’d relive every act of kindness I had encountered, and tuck it close to my heart. The belief that people are inherently good, badly shaken by focusing on the neverending cycle of bad news, returned again.

My life-long fear of other people, a burden that held me back and kept me from being free for as long as I can remember, melted away over the last year.
When you find peace and acceptance within yourself, everything else becomes secondary. The opinion of others loses its power to destroy. It may sting, but you know that you’ve survived far worse than a few stings.

Being outside daily during daylight pretty much eliminated my SADs (seasonal affective disorder). Thanks to starting many of my shifts at noon, I could walk even on days when I work, and it was a game changer. Not only did it ground me before work, giving me the best start possible, but it also made the oppressive feeling of darkness that many of us experience during the winter disappear. By filling up my tank with sun and daylight, I didn’t dread the darkness - I celebrated it. After exerting myself in the cold and snow, it felt heavenly to cozily tuck myself under a blanket on the couch, reading or watching a show, with the soft glow of candles and twinkle lights and the dogs contentedly snoozing next to me.

But maybe the most important gift I found in the woods is the gift of safety. In September, after encountering more black bears during my walks than ever before, I googled once again “How dangerous are black bears?” It’s a yearly ritual, to reassure myself that they are mostly safe. I came across an exellent article written by Lynn Rogers, an American biologist specializing in bears. One sentence in it touched me deeply.
“One of the safest places a person can be is in the woods.”

I recognized myself in those words. Without noticing, the woods have become my safe place. Despite the threat of fire, the wild animals, the ice that made me fall last winter and the occasional random guy I’ve encounter during hunting season, there is no place I feel safer than in the woods (as long as I have my dogs with me). They have provided comfort, refuge, wisdom, and peace.
The woods have healed me.

I’ve always struggled with the impermanence of life. I worry more than is probably advisable about my loved ones dying, the possibility of our house burning down, of losing what is near and dear to my heart.
I can’t change that. Impermanence is universal, the great equalizer that unites all living creatures - plants, animals, and humans.

The dogs, trees, and nature have taught me to enjoy the now. I know that sorrow is coming, that there are painful goodbyes in my future. Loss is part of every life.
But I’ve learnt to appreciate all the love that is in my life now, which is not promised to all of us. Some never get to experience it.
I’ve opened myself up this last year and received more love and friendship than I ever had before. It’s vulnerable and sets me up for future heartbreak - but it’s worth it. It’s filled up all the empty spaces in me, the ones I used to fill with wine in a futile attempt to feel whole.

I’m whole now. And I know that I will get through the hard times again, because I have before. And this time I have the wisdom of the trees by my side, the knowledge that after every winter comes spring again. No matter how cold and dark it gets, light and warmth are waiting around the corner.
And best of all: there’s beauty in the darkness and cold. And knowing that it can be found in the darkest of times is infinitely comforting.

Here’s to embracing it all: light, darkness, love, loss.
I’m off now, for another walk through the woods. To keep on healing, one step at a time.

❤️ Miriam

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