The body is the pen

By Cheryl Murfin

Why do I start these long, long walks with the same two to three invitations, dispersed over the first two to three days of walking:

Day one: See.

Day two: Hear.

Sometimes on day three: Smell.

In the right circumstance: Taste

And, always, there is the invitation to touch the world that exposes itself on a long walk—the peeling tree bark, the heart rock underfoot, the tall grasses, ferns, gate fences, and any socially amenable cattle.

The reason is simple: to write is to engage the senses, to filter thought through the body experience.

I didn't know this until I slowed myself down enough to allow my senses to engage fully. And that is why, as our feet turned from Melrose, we four writers walked slowly. One-two-three-pause. Look left, look right, inhale, exhale.

Not only does this pace make a long climb easier, it reveals the tiniest angles, the almost invisible stories. A glove, hoisted on a fence post, waiting to be reunited with the hand that lost it. There is a story there. Or the small snag of sheep's wool, waving from a shrub. Did it come from a mother or a lamb? Was this where the lamb arrived? There is a story there, too.

We walk to find our stories, our words. Each tiny thing, each gaze held just a little longer, reveals a part of what we must write. I've learned I can bring the whole world into my writing this way, simply by looking deeply with my senses. Where does the hooded crow fit in my words? What does it represent? What does it have to say?

In the piece below, my fellow walking writer, Barbara, listens to her senses as they divine her words.

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Writing from the road

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Pieces

Barbara Lyghtel Rohrer

I.

Black cow.

Rock wall.

Wooden posts 

strung with wire.

Cloud heavy sky.

Sun breaking 

through to blue.

Hills green,

green, green,

and the smallest 

plant of gold

sprigs with

many branches ––

each alone adding

to the fullness 

of what is –-

while far below

a silver stream

of water goes on

forever. 

Quiet. 

So quiet.

II.

The music is a lift, as the hills are a lift. Rising me up to what I could not see before. And so each gives –- a view of what is possible.  How to describe all the shades of green. Vast and calling. And before me, little sprigs of gold moving in the wind as if to say small though we are, we too add beauty, each important to the whole. The foreground, the foreshadowing of the gold to be found in the highlands. 

III.

When we were born,

God gave us 

a string 

to hold 

all the beads 

of our lives. 

When we die,

we enter 

into heaven 

wearing 

a string 

of beads,

show 

our loved ones 

the necklace 

we created.

Some stones 

are stunning 

in their array 

of color.

Some stones 

are not 

particularly pretty, 

but have 

a beauty 

of their own 

for the contrast 

they give. 

And as we point 

to each bead, 

we can say, 

Holy, Holy. Holy.

IV.

Today we walk to Holy Island. I want to do it barefoot in the sand. Not so much as an act of redemption, but was a way to connect, to leave a bit of an impression of who I am, how I stand, move, and, yes, have my being. By night fall, all those impressions will be lost to the physical realm but remain in that which is most real –– the invisible, which without the visible world would not exist.

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