There’s a parallel between hiking and praying that is often overlooked.
Many ‘folk Christians’ resort to free-form prayer. Free-form prayer is stream of consciousness; it’s unstructured rambling, even if earnest. But the greatest religious traditions, including Xtianity and Islam, have tomes of scripted prayers that abide by a logic and aim.
Take, for example, The Lord’s Prayer.
The opening, “Our Father” establishes the person to whom the prayer is directed, is grounded in a claim about the nature of the relationship and serves to remind the supplicant of her dependancy; “who are in heaven” establishes transcendence, and on and on. The prayer advances by a certain logic. The formulations allow for a guided prayer.
Regrettably, I couldn’t find any books that lay out how we ought hike. Like prayer, the operating assumption is that some benefit simply in virtue of our participation.
But like prayer, we would truly benefit from some reflective prescriptions while hiking or else, you’re just sorta walking around with a wandering mind.
One prescription might be to focus on the sounds for the first 1/3 of the hike. Then colors and then smells. Or, imagine yourself an animal on this hike.
Or…be silent.
You feel me, or nah?
What do you think about while on a hike?