Week 8 - Walking like Sheperd

I walk the trails at Griffy Lake often enough that the place feels familiar, but the experience of walking it never feels exactly the same. Returning again and again has made me more attentive to the small changes that happen along the trail. The path itself is predictable, the same turns, the same stretches of packed dirt and exposed roots and trees, but the details shift constantly. Some days the lake is perfectly still and perfectly reflects the trees, while other days the wind moves across the surface and breaks the reflection into fragments of light. Walking there today has made me notice things I would normally pass by without thinking.

This kind of attention feels similar to the way Nan Shepherd describes experiencing the mountains in The Living Mountain. The point is not to reach a destination quickly or treat the landscape as something to move through. Instead, the walk is about noticing what is already there. When I walked at Griffy today, I started to pay attention to details that are easy to overlook, the pattern of roots crossing the trail, the sound of water moving against the rocks near the shore, and the way the light shifts depending on how dense the trees are overhead.


Because I visit Griffy so often, I've also started to notice how the trail changes over time. After rain, like we've had so much of this week, parts of the path soften and the earth smells stronger, and the lake looks darker and heavier. Each visit builds on the previous one, and the trail becomes less like a place you simply walk through and more like a place you slowly come to know. After our discussion yesterday, I went into the walk trying to notice all the elements of the landscape like Sheperd and it made my walk so much more intentional. 


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