Thriving By Walking Around

We maintain trails through the property - through the prairie grasses, through the woods, around the lawn.  More than mere "access", they are an invitational feature of our particular landscape.  They beckon, as surely as a curled finger motioned in our direction.  "Come," they whisper; "explore."  And though not nearly often enough, we do - on foot, on snowshoes, on the bench of the utility cart.  We answer the summons to pay closer attention.

Every season has its reward - in summer the joints of the bluestem, the monarch on the wildflower, the lushness of the foliage; in fall the crispness of the air and the color in the leaves; in winter the muffling carpet of snow, the crystalline accents in the elbows of the trees; in spring the myriad awakenings, the buds, the awkward fawn.  There are textures.  There are scents.  There is more than meets the eye and ear.  We walk amongst it, not to get anywhere in particular, but to see, to feel, to listen attentively and receive the gift of what life along the trails has to say.

Not, as I earlier confessed, often enough.  We make excuses.  "It's too hot."  "It's too cold."  "It's raining."  "I'm tired."  All the while, the grasses whisper, the leaves shimmer in the breeze, the hedge apples swell and fall and roll like bowling balls, the deer tamp down trails of their own, the colors evolve.

I'm determined to counter my neglect.  Recently an old word reentered my orbit that has tugged with a gravitational pull.  "Peripatetic" is a transliteration of a Greek word that means, at its simplest, "to walk around."  It is an "onomatopoeia" kind of word to me - it sounds...ambulatory; active.  Peripatetic.  Aristotle's educational endeavor (4th C. BCE) was known as the "Peripatetic School" because, not being a citizen of Athens and therefore unable to own property, he lectured to his trailing students while walking along the pathways of the city's common spaces.

In his own version of "The Peripatetic School," business leadership guru Tom Peters centuries later encouraged an effectiveness strategy he coined, "MBWA" - management by walking around.  A leader can learn a great deal, he argued, by pushing away from the desk, exiting the office, and wandering around the workplace, observing, listening, chatting, building rapport.  It is to suggest that as much or more can be learned viscerally - through our pores - than via the data of reports.

At the very least it is more interesting.  And nourishing.

I'm determined to more regularly feed our "Peripatetic School" of homesteading - which is to say, "of living."

Walking around.

Paying attention.

Listening.

Learning.

Not merely maintaining the trails, but using them; and allowing them to use me.

TBWA:  "Thriving By Walking Around."

It might not be an efficient strategy for getting places, but it may well be the only means of living in them.