Routine

My routine used to be carefully calculated.

The airport drop off, cabin bags only, fast track, lounge, gate, flight, taxi, hotel…

All well-rehearsed in support of getting to the next place and back again efficiently, comfortably, with minimum delays.

Dutifully working through routines and drills is a pattern that lies deep within me but I’m slowly un-learning, unravelling the habit. I’m becoming less concerned with efficiency or effectiveness and more interested in quality; not only the quality of my routines but the qualities of the spaces through which I travel. I’ve swapped airport walkways for woodland trails and, as I’ve stopped focussing on where I need to be, I’ve found fascination in where I am and in a different, softer chronology that reveals itself in the apparent simplicity taking of slow steps on a familiar path.

The gentle pace of my daily pilgrimage offers time for reflection; a chance to let thoughts seep through me and questions settle, time ‘to be’ rather than relentlessly ‘do.’ While conventional pilgrimages are framed as a devotional trek to a distant, sacred place, my own version finds that place much closer to home. I simply cross the road towards the woods at the end of our driveway and walk into a sacred space of mind and ecology. Though my choice of physical route is limited, each day, as I retrace my steps, I step closer to my landscape, feeling how its complex integrity wraps around my curious presence.

As I’ve walked, I’ve come to know individual trees and and how the vistas between them change as seasons shift. As our planet travels and tilts, the woods thin with cold or fill into warmth, they rise on calm days or flatten as heavy rain falls. I’ve seen streams flood and watched ponds form in hollows, the water becoming encrusted with ice as winds shift and chilling blasts have rocked the arboreal skyline. My sense of time itself has shifted; from the interminable mush of workday screens to a tactile, felt, embodied relationship with my world, seeing differently into a morning sunrise, dwelling longer, through a more considered day, and savouring softer evenings.

This is a pilgrimage that doesn’t require a map or compass, all it needs is surrender to the constancy of walking step-by-step through a perpetually emerging and renewing landscape. It’s a simple, repetitive routine that invites us into a deep appreciation of the deeper, enfolded complexities of our experience.

As David Abram writes:

“The way that all those other bodies - trees, bushes, hillsides - shift in relation to each other compels my thorough inclusion in the landscape; when I really notice and pay attention to their transformations, I’m forced to discover myself utterly inside the physical world.”

And with a prescient nod to an age of reduced, sustainable travel, he goes on:

“I feel my own smallness...[…]… Yet no matter how minuscule, I also feel my own agency, my own autonomy within this massively real world. I’m embedded in this world, yes - but I am not bound, not imprisoned.”

I’m holding my routines more lightly now. Rather than forcing the woodlands to fit my expectations, I’m noticing how a sacred world gently speaks to me as the path of my attention detours around fallen branches or wanders through drifts of early spring flowers.

The woodlands bring me into a routine all of their own.

Notes:

My years in aviation were all about routines. Meticulous checking and rechecking, searching for anything unexpected, any deviation from the norm that might reduce safety, increase risk or result in accident. The meta-tasks of pattern recognition and the skilful application of (multiple) routines is the foundational work of the cockpit yet even skilled operators can make the world fit their expectations with potentially tragic outcomes.

The Camino di Santiago , the network of routes leading to the cathedral of Santiago di Compostela in Northern Spain is perhaps one of our best known contemporary pilgrimages. This lovely short film (16mins) documents Maria’s Way as she sits beside the camino counting the pilgrims.

In 1962, Satish Kumar set out from New Delhi to walk 8000 miles to the four corners of the nuclear world. His book ‘Earth Pilgrim’ begins by distinguishing between tourists and pilgrims: “Tourists find gratification in the consumption of nature’s gifts. Pilgrims find enchantment in the conservation of nature’s bounty.”

Finally, my quote by David Abram is from ‘Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology.’ Abram offers the tempting proposition that we might visit the woods and pay attention to the ‘chattering leaves’: ‘Step into their shade. Listen Close. Something other than the human mind is at play here.’