Under a Wide Open Sky

Again, this is what we can do. To liberate ourselves from the suffocating and intoxicating entanglements of media and internet news. To break out, move outside and undergo the freshness of our walking adventures. Nothing special or spectacular. Nothing exceptional or examplary. It is just the Way that fits best to us. You could have chosen other exercises: biking, swimming, climbing, rowing, whatever You have found to be your own best orientation, your Way of TAO or Mindfullness. Your do not need to go out shopping for an ultimate goal or (re-)creative meaningfullness.Because it all is about the spiritual mindset.


Some of our walking rounds across the wide surroundings will start from a village church. Most of these old churches are open for a silent moment, the settling in into a more serene mode than the driving-mode for road traffic. A village will already offer places, corners, sights and directions for going into the surrounding highlands and fields. It concentrates in its structure and positions and inclinations for the multi-focality of activity-orientations into the outside world of farming and forresting. For the walker a rich gathering of possible choices for the most attractive way out, the inviting beauty of a valley, a slope, a panorama.


But the most detaching and liberating impact of walking out into an inviting direction is being exposed to certain elements and conditions. It may start to rain or the sun vanishes or is hot. A cold wind may blow, while you have forgotten your handshoes. You may have to climb or a track is wet and muddy. And at some point in time amidst all adventurous discoveries, you start to lose your primary connections with the preoccupations you left behind at home.


Slowly, without consciously realizing, we engage into the spacious conditions of the landscape. And if the wind is blowing and the changing horizon is wide, all around and far, far away, you start feeling that awe. That vague experience of being lifted up into the cloudy skies. This elevating experience, this engaging into a painterly environment, this longing in reaching out towards far away mountain tops, forests as friends.

This following of lovely brooks up to their origins: their often hidden wells. And sharing its discovery. That is what makes the liberating experience of walking together. The agrandizing and enriching disentanglement out of your daily preoccuping sores, fears and cares. That is what lifts you up into an unravelling dancing through the landscape.