4 Ways to Walk

Where to look when you’re lost (which might be right now)

One afternoon in our old neighborhood, a decade ago in those endless early years of motherhood, on what felt like the thousandth walk of the week, I started to pay attention to where my eyes landed.

With the toddler and baby tucked in their trusty double stroller, I’d stare at my shoes between the spinning wheels. Then I’d glance over the canvas canopies to see where the road turned next. Once in a while I’d look ahead to the horizon, gauging the angle of light left, or peer up at the sky, the wide and promising stretch above.

Chalk it up in the category of things-I-never-noticed-till-parenthood: turns out I shift my gaze a thousand times during a single walk. Up, down, out, over, recalibrating and responding without realizing.

Over the years as I walked solo, as we added more kids to our hikes, as seasons passed and returned, I noticed how my walking gaze changed depending on the day’s terrain. I started tracking: where did I look as we strolled? When did my attention shift—and why? The ways I watched when I walked started to matter, the closer I looked.

Here’s an unofficial travelogue of four places you can look while walking—and what they can teach us about how we travel this blue-green earth.

Down at your feet

When the road gets rough or my legs get tired, I stare hard at the ground beneath my feet. Watch where you’re going. Look out for rocks and roots. Don’t slip, don’t trip, don’t run.

Centering down is clear wisdom. To be where you are and nowhere else. To take care of your side of the street, as my sister-in-law says.

You are here and only here, this dirt and stone under your shoes, navigating the thousand tiny adjustments needed to travel this particular patch of earth. Your scuffed sneakers or your mud-smeared hiking boots, caked with clay—they are proof you were here and you did not stay put.

Ahead of you

Once you gain confidence and courage, from a well-known path or a sharpening inner compass, you start to look out ahead. Scanning three feet ahead of you, then six feet, maybe ten. Gauging the pavement cracks, surveying the path’s twisted turns, navigating fallen trees, muddy puddles or gnarly roots. 

Looking ahead brings steadier movement, the place where anticipation meets arrival. Where will you be a few steps down the line? Do you need to change course, slow down or speed up? What’s coming next?

The metaphor lurches up like a rock in the road, obvious and alerting. How can you prepare for what awaits? Can you learn to lift your focus from here-and-now to embrace there-and-then?

Out at the horizon

Sometimes you can look past now, with its tangled worries, to find a focal point far ahead. The edge of the earth where clouds gather, mountains rise, and storms loom. Where sea meets sky or sun kisses trees. The perspective of all lines converging, all angles meeting, the limits of your sight vanishing in the future far away.

Looking to the horizon brings the guiding light of a goal, an endpoint up ahead. The place where sunrise and sunset happen brings hope, even astonishing beauty. Horizons draw us to keep moving forward, to raise our eyes to a broader vista than the temporary troubles of where we’re walking.

Up at the sky

The vast view. The widest angle. The ultimate perspective. Looking up to the sky can help you watch where you’re going in the ultimate sense.

Often we can tear our eyes away to the heavens for only the briefest glimpse of blinding sun or sweeping sky. But it’s enough to keep us going, the cosmic lift we need as we concentrate our efforts here below. 

You can’t crane your neck up for long, just a quick glance before gravity brings you back to earth. But looking up can guide you, too, freeing you from your own stumbling steps and the tyranny of now, reminding you how many others share this wide earth and its winding paths. 

Watching where you look when you walk is like a key on a map, helping you decipher your surroundings, your energy and ability, even your mood.

The four ways to walk mirror our growth, too. Novices tend to focus on their own steps, following footprints from those who walked this way before. Once beginners gain their bearings, they can begin to broaden their horizon, looking up ahead. Eventually experts gather enough experience to lift their eyes and take in the long view without worrying about the next step every time.

Our family is embarking on a summer road trip: a six-state epic sweeping across nearly every national park between Minnesota and Idaho. By the time you read this, we’ll have hiked miles every day, through mountains and valleys, Badlands and Black Hills.

I am quite confident that I will have spent most of our hikes tripping over my own feet, walking slow with a toddler in tow or watching the kids running away. If I get to strike out solo, I’ll hope to enjoy the chance to look six feet ahead once in a while. But most of all, I hope I get to soak up the wide western horizon and crane my head up to lose my worries in the endless sky above. 

Sight is not something we all share as humans; same goes for walking. Neither is required for a hike in the woods or a turn round the neighborhood. But noticing how our physical senses shift in the moment, adapting to what we need and what we meet, can deepen an awareness of our place on the planet.

Each way I learned to walk, each shift in sight, has saved my life at one turn or another.

Thank God for the days I plodded through uninspired walks, the nightly rounds through our neighborhood during the early pandemic. When I was depressed beyond what I could see, watching my own feet, right under my nose, was enough to keep going.

Thank God for the healing, hopeful times when I could lift my eyes to meet what was waiting down the road, when I could prepare and plan for what I might encounter, when I could meet neighbors and strangers crossing paths, a nod of humanity shared between us.

Thank God for broader horizons that stretched my imagination and the widest promise of the stretching sky above, whether blue with hope or stormy from change. The flashes where I felt myself small on the earth and gathered back into the mystery of the universe.

Thank God for all of it. For wild paths and ordinary sidewalks. For wobbly stroller wheels and weathered hiking boots. For well-worn paths and unknown wilderness. For rising after stumbling. For every chance we get to change our point of view.

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