Solved

October 14, 2024

Greetings from the work in progress,

A few weeks ago my son Harrison shared this phrase that caught my attention, for good reason.  I wrote it down so I could think about it later, but I thought about it every day since. 

“Solvitur ambulando”. It is a Latin phrase which means "It is solved by walking."

There is some complicated and deep philosophy around it, which I read just long enough to know that simplest expression was the best.  It is solved by walking. 

I spent the last few days hiking alone in the woods.  I took the food and shelter I needed, a book I thought I’d read, and not much of anything else.  Somehow that still filled my pack about a third heavier than I expected.  The ongoing lesson in simplicity is that you almost never need as much as you think.

I planned to go on this outing earlier in the year, a little adventure, but other adventures filled in those days.  This week was when I really needed to go, I had been feeling a little unsettled, not myself, in fact I felt like I was coming down with whatever crud everyone seems to be getting.  It turns out that it was a different crud that was actually plaguing me. 

I didn’t set out with an agenda.  In fact the only plans I made that mattered were the food to bring and roughly where I would hike for three days.  I say ‘roughly’ because my inept orienteering and nature’s sense of humor, I sometimes was not exactly where I thought I was.

One satisfying surprise was that I had almost no connection to cell service, so most of the hours I was awake I was untethered from that temptation.  It turns out, this is part of what I needed to solve by walking.  To disconnect from the stream of chaos that whirls around all of us.

What occupied my mind for some of the hours was what was needed.  Where I would find water, when I should stop to rest, a place to set up a tent for the night, finding firewood, getting the next breath up this endless hill.  The next strata was silly things, like the lyrics to songs I could almost remember.  I like to sing while I walk, and whenever I run out of words I just add a different song.  If you were hiking behind me it would be like listening to an AM radio wavering through weak signals from stations that only played off key versions of Cat Stevens and James Taylor.

But mostly I was quiet, which is also what needed to be solved.  In the first day of walking I sang through my repertoire and then let the silence do its work.  At the end of the day I camped next to a small stream, which told an interesting story, which began with, “Listen…”

I woke early each morning thinking about the process of making coffee on my little stove, which I have come to love almost as much as the coffee itself.  Almost.  There is no better taste, or feeling, than your first cup of coffee sitting next to a morning fire.

I walked from the first light until the sun dropped behind the trees, listening, noticing, stopping at anything that caught my eye.  I walked in the woods, tramping down leaf littered trails between towering pines, along the shores of a determined river.  I walked up cliffsides, into marshy bogs, I walked along the edge of a lake whose name I cannot pronounce.  I walked all of the chaos out of me.  I walked, which led me to what the silence allowed to form in all of my waking hours.  Gratitude.

I like to think that being grateful is a central tenet of my life, but it can be a fragile thing.  All it takes is a few aches, some bad headlines, a few ridiculous choices, and my reaction to the world gets skewed.  There are some practices I have used to shore myself up, but I’m here to testify: solivitur ambulando.

I woke up Saturday morning listening to the little creek sharing one of its main messages, a soft lilting whisper just a dozen feet from where it lulled me to sleep.  I stood outside my tent and gasped at the spectacular dome of stars held up by the pillars of pines around me.  Soon I was sitting on a log next to my fire, sipping coffee, watching the light come, watching the steam rise from the river that the little creek made possible.  A heron stalked breakfast in the shallows, nearly hidden by the fog.

I walked between trees older and wiser than I, by far, and admired their bursts of red and gold in the first sunlight of the morning.  Even the pines seemed more vivid, as if inspired by their deciduous neighbors.  I walked for miles without knowing how far, without watching a clock or a screen or listening to doubtful thoughts. I walked until I lost the urge to complain or to judge or to envy or to regret.  I walked and walked and walked.  Until I was solved.

Hope this finds you going and finding it,

David

Copyright © 2024 David Smith