The Benefits of a Leisurely Walk

Be soothed and healed

My sister Carolyn taking a leisurely walk with me along the track to Nancy Peak in the Porongurups. Rob, walking in an even more leisurely fashion behind, took the photo.

Shall I buy a Fitness Tracker?

It would measure the distance I walked every day, how fast I went, how hard my heart worked, how many calories I burned and how well or badly I slept afterwards. Perhaps the tracker could even predict my moment of death, based on my current state of health.

This is vital information. I’m surprised I’ve lived so long without one strapped to my wrist.

Perhaps I’ll get a pink one. Or cobalt blue. Hmm. So many choices.

I could wear it in the shower, to bed and to the Melbourne Cup with a matching haute couture hat, and still look fashionable in all three places.

With a Fitness Tracker my daily walk could turn into a fact-finding, heart-stopping mini marathon.

But I don’t want it to.

I enjoy my daily walk just as it is.

I don’t walk to strain my heart, burst my lungs, or beat Tom Bosworth’s one-mile Walking World Record of 5:31.08 minutes.

When I go for a walk, I want it to be leisurely.

My walking heroes are Ralph Waldo Emerson and John Burroughs.

Here is what they say.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (lived to be 78):

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.

John Burroughs (lived to be 83):

I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order.

Ah, the joy of taking an almost aimless wander. To dodder along, stopping to investigate a hole in the sand, a wisp of spiderweb caught on a wire fence, a bird dropping.

To take a deep breath, not to feed my oxygen-starved body but to inhale the refreshing tang of peppermint tree flowers drooping overhead in summer heat.

To listen carefully, not to the pounding feet of a competitor coming up from behind wearing a fancier, chunkier, more iridescent Fitness Tracker than mine, but to the rustle in the undergrowth to my left that could be a skink, a tiger snake or a legless lizard.

Leave your Fitness Tracker in the box it came in.

Go for a leisurely walk.

Adopt the patient pace of nature.

Have your senses put in order.

Be soothed and healed.

With love, Marlane