Gazing at the Sun. I walked yesterday as the moon passed before the sun. Families and couples had gathered in clusters across the drought-bleached fields, some gazing upwards, others with homemade colanders resting on knees, on paper, on the ground before them. Voices held momentarily by the air before disappearing. I noticed how the light... Continue Reading →
A hosepipe ban flashed up on my phone last week. My neighbour's long, bright green expandable hose used to pass from garden to garden until the ban came into force. Now I make the journey from kitchen sink to vegetable patch carrying a full green watering can. Cold water splashes against my bare legs. Courgettes,... Continue Reading →
Injuring one's knee at 62 is not going to build character. It's just plain stupid. I stepped up on a log with gusto and lust for life and fell after a wobble of the log transferred to a wobble in my knee. Here I am. Laid up on my back deck in Montreal while the... Continue Reading →
Saturday July 11th, 2026 This past week I’ve been walking late in the evening. It’s still hot, but the heat has a strange ascending quality. The air feels like a living breathing entity that I wade through. The air rises in slow lazy currents, shimmering across the fields of dry wheat as the trees in... Continue Reading →
Vermont Wall Coming upon a wall in the middle of a Vermont forest raises so many questions for me. Who built it? What was it delineating? If it predates these old trees, was it demarcating farmland? These stones satisfy so many of my aesthetic interests: texture, craftsmanship, nature reclaiming human interventions, seemingly random lines and... Continue Reading →
As the heat rises, I walk earlier and earlier in the morning. Even at six-thirty the ground feels hot and my nostrils burn slightly with the dryness of the air, laden with an overturn of straw and wheatchaff. All around colour seems bleached to a golden dryness. The critters that have passed through earlier have... Continue Reading →
It's June 22nd. The solstice was last night. The temperature is slowly rising. Inside 27°C, outside 28°C. My body is damp, my head heavy. I used to love the heat, the hotter the better. Walking through the streets of New York in July or August always felt like an adventure, never knowing what heat-filled interventions... Continue Reading →
It’s Thursday. I’m doing Jo’s walk. I pick a random direction, 300 paces from my house. I find myself counting paces in twenties. Falling into an intuitive rhythm of twenty. Trusting it. I’m in the middle of an alley, middle of a block, at Gate 1. Looking for something meaningful to rest my eyes and... Continue Reading →
Even though it's early morning the temperature has risen, the mulchy mud has turned to a soft powder that billows with each step. Each step, a fluffy puff of brown, making my feet blend into the ground, the dust erasing their nature as trainers. My nostrils seem to recede, attacked by the dust, pollen and... Continue Reading →
What lies in between one resting place and another? The cracks in the pavement, the weeds and wild flowers, the detritus left by other walkers. Or perhaps the space between each breath. Spring is threshold work. Crossing from one threshold to another. Each threshold a quickening as Spring brings new life. The temptation is to... Continue Reading →
WALKING TOGETHER APART 