A transformative collection of essays on the power of walking to connect with ourselves, each other, and nature itself.
In 2010, Jonathon Stalls and his blue-heeler husky mix began their 242-day walk across the United States, depending upon each other and the kindness of strangers along the way. In this collection of essays, Stalls explores walking as waking up: how a cross-country journey through the family farms of West Virginia, the deep freedom of Nevada’s High desert, and everywhere in between unlocked connections to his deepest aches and dreams—and opened new avenues for renewal, connection, and change.
While most of us won’t walk or roll across the country, the deep wisdom and insights that Stalls receives from the people, land, and animals he meets on his pilgrimage have profound impacts for each of us. He shares how walking deepened his relationship to himself as a gay man, offering deep and clarifying emotional medicine. He confronts the systemic racism, classism, and ableism that shape and reshape the communities he walks through. And he invites readers to become awakened activists, to begin healing our culture’s profound separation from the natural world.
WALK is for those who crave to feel and embody, not just know and study, their way through complex themes that live in each chapter: vulnerability, human dignity, presence, mystery, and resistance. With dedicated practices—like connecting to Earth stewardship, moving into vulnerability, and walking and rolling with intention—Stalls’ WALK is an urgent and glorious call to slow down, look around, and engage with the world in front of us. It awakens us to what we miss when we’re driving by, flying over, and rushing past what surrounds us. It’s an invitation to move, to connect, to participate deeply in the world—and to dissolve the barriers that disconnect us from each other and the living Earth.
ISBN-13: 9781623176952
Media Type: Paperback
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
Publication Date: 08-16-2022
Pages: 240
Product Dimensions: 5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.70(d)
In 2010, JONATHON STALLS spent 242 days walking across the United States and has continued to walk alongside thousands of people for thousands of miles through his ongoing organizing, programming, and creative efforts. He is an artist, social entrepreneur, and advocate for social, economic, racial, and LGBTQ+ justice. Stalls is the founder of two organizations, Intrinsic Paths and Walk2Connect.
Table of Contents
Preface xi
Introduction: Walking as Waking Up 1
1 Walking as Human Dignity 19
2 Walking as Humility 39
3 Walking as a Human Right 57
4 Walking as Earth Care 83
5 Walking as Relationship 99
6 Walking as Vulnerability 113
7 Walking as Play 131
8 Walking as Resistance 143
9 Walking as Creative Wonder 159
10 Walking as Presence 171
11 Walking as Rite of Passage 187
12 Walking as Mystery 203
Acknowledgments 215
References 217
Index 219
About the Author 225