To Saunter

A few days ago I read something interesting on Facebook. As we all know, not everything on Facebook is uplifting. Most posts reflect current affairs which are downright depressing. I admit, I add to the depression by angrily posting about the Hair Product-in-Chief and the Republican single party tyranny. But there are also interesting posts, as was this quote from John Muir:

Hiking - I don't like either the word or the thing. People ought to saunter in the mountains - not hike! Do you know the origin of that word "saunter"? It's a beautiful word. Away back in the Middle Ages people used to go on pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and when people in the villages through which they passed asked where they were going, they would reply, "A la sainte terre," "To the Holy Land." And so they became known as sainte-terre-ers or saunterers. Now these mountains are our Holy Land, and we ought to saunter through them reverently, not 'hike' through them."

Sauntering on Rampart Ridge, Cascades.

I found it interesting not just because I delight in etymology, the origin of words, and not just because I have two decades of history hiking in the Cascade and Olympic Mountains. It was interesting because I went sauntering with Nazar the Wonder Dog through the wash this past Sunday and I found myself reflecting on a memory triggered by John Muir's quote. It was an aphorism I had made up: The slower you go, the more you see.

It's something I first noticed motorcycling back roads some forty-four years ago. I clung to the back of my brother Géza as he drove his Suzuki motorcycle seven thousand miles from Milwaukee to Florida to Arizona to Utah and back to Milwaukee. It was a new phenomenon, proceeding through space with nothing but a helmet visor between me and the environment. We avoided freeways and stopped at many a scenic place: Smoky Mountains, Big Bend and Organ Pipe Cactus parks, Grand Canyon, the canyon lands of southern Utah, and a drive through Yellowstone.

Sauntering among tame Wyoming "bears".

(I remember the rangers at Yellowstone handing out leaflets warning drivers not to roll down their car windows to see the bears. We got stuck on a traffic jam where drivers and passengers rolled down their windows to see a mother bear and her cubs by the side of the road. Several eagerly encouraged Géza and me to look also, oblivious to the fact they were in their steel cages while we sat in the open, inching past the bears hoping the mother bear was not as irritated as we were.)

Then I took up bicycling as an outdoor activity. One can see a lot more at the pace of a bicycle, and feel more, too — in legs, buttocks and lungs.

Then I took up hiking in the mountains. That was mostly hiking, as in John Muir's definition, with only a little sauntering. Most saunters were after we made camp.

Hummingbird perched on an agave spine.

Now I like to sit and watch the saguaros grow. It takes a bit of effort for me to just sit. I always feel like I should be doing something. But if I do just sit, I see lizards scurrying and doing their push-ups, hummingbirds competing for access to the feeder, hawks soaring, monarch butterflies flapping to caesalpinia flowers, quail and dove pecking at seeds on the ground, even the occasional bobcat or coyote looking for prey. This is all stuff I miss walking, and not just because my attention is distracted. Walking by itself prompts the little critters to retreat into holes or hide behind scrub.

When I walk Nazar, I have to stop because he constantly stops to smell something or another. In those gaps, I stare at trees, the patterns of sand in the wash, the colors and textures of rocks, and the shadows and clouds over the Catalinas. I have my favorite porcupine cactus, two of them. I always stop to see how they are doing. Except for keeping an eye on the dog (he doesn't need a leash except on a road with traffic), it's a bit of a saunter.

Contrast a saunter with flying in an airliner, or driving on a freeway. How much do you see at six hundred or even seventy miles an hour?

Hence my aphorism, the slower you go, the more you see. Or the more present you are. Or the more awareness you have. In meditation terms, when one is completely still, one sees all. In saunter terms, one has attained the sacred land.