I was talking to a friend recently while we were on a walk. We were sitting in front of Dublin Bay. I asked her for ideas on blogpost topics. Topics that would interest people, and even inspire them a bit. 

She looked out at the sea in front of her, and then turned to me and said, “‘Going places,’ yes that’s what people are thinking of right now, where can they go, and how soon?”

About half an hour later as we continued on our walk she said, “‘Walking,’ why don’t you talk about walking and all its benefits?”

And it got me thinking…

The art of layering information

I have just finished a course (online) on Tour Guiding. As you can imagine it was all about how to guide and conduct tours at home and abroad. One of the key take-aways for me was learning the art of how to layer a tour. 

To layer your tour creates an altogether different experience - the audience imbibe information on archaeology, or history, a literary reference, or a piece of folklore or myth, or a story connected with the place or thing you are touring.  They feel connected with place… 

While we can get hung up on ‘getting away’, ‘going places’, travelling abroad, escaping to other countries and places (there is nothing wrong with that and we all need it at times). But maybe we forget the value of places at home, ordinary and simple. Maybe we need to open our minds and hearts to the richness of the ordinary everyday - even banal - adventure, and relish and savour its richness and insights. Do we need to practise layering, discover what is right there in front of our noses and fill our minds with it.

A new purpose

Patrick Kavanagh, the famous Monaghan poet and muse was rushed into Baggot Street hospital with a collapsed lung in 1954. He was told he would be dead within a few hours. But he survived the operation, and not just that, he changed dramatically. Formerly he had been a heavy drinker, cynical about love and relationships. Now slowly released into a new life, he took some walks along the banks of the canal near Baggot street where he was living, and found poetry and above all a new purpose in life. 

He found God and entered a totally different mental space. More hopeful, more upbeat, more positive. The green waters of the canal bank were now pouring ‘redemption’ on him ‘that I do the will of God, wallow in the habitual the banal, grow with nature as before I grow.’

He goes on to say, ‘give me ad lib to pray unselfconsciously with overflowing speech, for this soul needs to be honoured with a new dress woven from green and blue things, and arguments that cannot be proven.’

We may not find Kavanagh’s spiritual vision and new life by just walking along the banks of the canal, or along the banks of anywhere. But one thing the tour guiding course taught me is to look at things in a totally different way. All twelve of us who finished the course learned to breathe new life into old things, to find the hidden, exciting story behind an old rock, or rediscover heroism in a dilapidated building. 

Hidden stories 

And so, when you come across a stone, or a monument or just a wall on your next walk, think of the hidden histories of people in the past, the legends behind that monument or stone, or the reasons why it carries its name. I was fascinated by the fact that the very college where we did the course was formerly the grounds of a monastery. And that leads on to speculate about the lives of those monks, their silent love of God, their rich contribution to the community around them. All of this can enrich us, can fill us with new life. Can be revitalising, re energising. It is extracting the richness from the ordinary that Patrick Kavanagh managed to do.

So go places on your walks. Go out of your comfort zones, search for the new, the hidden, the secret tale that lies behind every stone. Don’t be waiting for airports to open up. There are already many open worlds waiting to be discovered.