Confessions of a Walker

By Lila Shakti

Walking is like an old confidante for me — always available, but not always utilized. When I decided that I wanted to live in Portland, OR, I was taking a walk. I was visiting Portland, and attending a wedding at Silver Falls. It was the beginning of May and the weather was glorious. The wedding party was gathered under a gazebo, eating food and laughing and listening to music. As I joined in the merriment, amidst the most beautiful old growth forest I had ever seen, I got the sudden urge to be alone.

I left the wedding party and hiked up a narrow but steep paved trail. As I climbed, the sun slanted down and lit the path before me in a golden, glorious light. There were huge trees surrounding me and I was completely alone. While walking, I was overcome with the beauty of the trees, the silence of the forest, and the witnessing of the powerful declaration of love between my friends. My tears started to fall; I felt this mystical and ancient land cradle me with its power. I was walking and talking to myself in the forest, and it felt absolutely right.

I realized that my life was missing any sort of spiritual connection with the earth we live on. From the simple act of walking, I was able to release old and negative emotions. Heading back down the trail, I felt transformed.

Walking is not just about moving your legs to get somewhere, often it is where walking takes us within ourselves that is more the point.

In the late spring of 2006, when my first daughter was about 12 weeks old, I was in the middle of a deep, but not yet diagnosed post partum depression. I was carrying around an extra 50 pounds on me and was trying to navigate life as a stay-at-home mom. I knew that I needed to get out of the house and lose weight so I decided to put an ad on Craig’s List for a walking partner, preferably a new mother like myself. I only got one reply and we are friends to this day.

And so I became a walker. I met Susan for the first time at the end of Law Street in Pacific Beach, San Diego. One scheduled morning, with coffees in hand, our babies in their strollers, we started and covered three miles on that original day. By year’s end we were walking more than six miles a day! It literally changed my life, got me moving, and outdoors. My newly discovered endorphins released me from my crippling depression.

Exercise transformed my postpartum body — I became stronger, slept better, had more energy, and developed more muscle tone. The pounds slowly started coming off, and I felt better about the woman/lady/person I saw in the mirror.

We moved here to Oregon in December of 2008 and we got here just in time for the biggest snowfall Portland has seen in the last 50 years. I was seven months pregnant and we were snowed in with our 3 year-old. When I couldn’t handle being in the house anymore, I put my galoshes on and hiked up 55th and Stark with a girlfriend to go to breakfast. My stomach was so big that we had to stop often, but the pristine white of the snow-covered city was breathtaking. I was blown away when I saw people snowshoeing down Belmont! Trudging through the two feet deep snow, I was amazed at the sheer number of walkers — even when it’s pouring rain, pelting hail, or dumping buckets of snow, Oregonians walk, unlike Californians. People here will actually forego driving so they can walk — no matter the weather. Portlanders are not wimps.

Most of us don’t think about walking. We just do it because it’s a necessity — like brushing our teeth and breathing. But when we do it consciously, it is like any other discipline — meditation, yoga, and dance, painting, or playing music. When we breathe deeply and with purpose it transforms anything mundane into the extraordinary.

I am now a mother of two, and walking, my old confidante, is transforming me into the person/being I know myself to be.