30 Walks in Nature

Reflections from my first big walking venture

Dear Friends, In October, I am hosting two retreats with Gilda’s Club Kentuckiana. (Both in-person only.)

• On Tuesday, October 15th, we’ll enjoy a 2-hour “Bounteous Nature Walk.”

• On Tuesday, October 29th, we’ll explore the power of journaling.

Gilda’s Club does truly amazing work with and for patients with cancer, their families and caregivers. If you or someone you know has been affected by cancer, join us for these special retreats. And check out their full calendar of terrific events over the coming months. 

Last summer, from July through September, I took “30 Walks in Nature” around Louisville. After a month of reflecting on them, I published this essay of Reflections on November 1, 2023.

Over the past year, I have spent considerable time further mulling over these walks — my first *big* walking project. And so I have revised and edited and added to my initial Reflections, and share these Further Reflections with you now.

Below the Further Reflections, you will find the full index of the 30 places I walked during this venture.

Enjoy a beautiful walk — in nature — today.

These 30 Walks in Nature did not feel like a project. No, they felt like a venture — even an adventure, although they were, by the world’s standards, tame. They felt like a calling – a calling into health, a calling into peace and wildness (oddly simultaneously), a calling into being, even a calling home. As each walk started, my pulse quickened in anticipation and curiosity. After a few steps, my heartbeat returned to normal. A smile spread across my face. My body felt, and stepped, lighter. 

I began these walks hoping to know my city — Louisville, Kentucky — in a different way from the usual daily drive downtown and walking around the central business district (a term which increasingly seems farcical). And different from my driving to various sporting and entertainment outposts for my daughters’s activities. 

Through these walks, I did come to a certain kind of knowledge about my city, distinct from my prior appreciation, which seemed limited. These walks in nature were also limited – but now, at least, I have two limited platforms to sit beside one another. 

The theme of limits came through loud and clear. I visited 30 different green spaces in and around Louisville. Many more exist within the friendly confines of Louisville Jefferson County – about 145, according to Wikipedia. Expanding our horizons a bit to the adjacent counties and nearby counties in southern Indiana, Wikipedia lists a further 51 major parks. 

And these are only parks. I took a few walks in backyards and random green spaces. I left a huge swath of ‘green Louisville’ untrodden. I didn’t even see many of the large non-park areas of nature, such as Waterfront Botanical Gardens, Abraham Lincoln’s Birthplace, or Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest. Through my research for the walks, I became aware – dimly – of even more opportunities to enjoy nature nearby – the Abbey of Gethsemani – famous as the home of the 20th century mystic Thomas Merton – has 1,500 acres with miles of trails nearby; the Nazareth Retreat Center also contains abundant walking paths; as does the Mount Saint Francis Center for Spirituality; and numerous farms, orchards and cemeteries. 

Within the nature I visited, I spent anywhere from 15 minutes to 5 hours. Even when I stayed for hours, I left feeling a distinct sense that I’d seen and experienced only a tiny fraction of nature’s offerings. Far from bothering me, I perceived in each departure from nature an invitation to return and enjoy again – and anew – its wonders.

I felt limited in another way. I experienced the sights and sounds of nature, but I know precious few names of the birds making the calls or the trees and flowers I saw. True, I felt my body react when I heard a birdsong or saw a towering green tree. But we humans seek knowledge – we give names, we attempt to understand relationships. We feel more when we know more – or at least I do. The sharp cry of the Blue Jay felt different inside me once I’d learned to recognize its call. I rejoiced in particulars. 

Even after 30 walks in nature, I know few particulars. I can tell the songs of the Blue Jay and American Crow; I can tell pretty well those of the Northern Cardinal and the Hairy-throated Woodpecker. I made no progress in differentiating trees or fungi or clouds. I still know…um, zero…of them by sight. 

Again, I felt this limitation but it did not frustrate me. Or at least it did not stop me. It made me eager to take more walks in nature – to use the Merlin ID app to become familiar with more birdsongs, to read Tristan Gooley’s books on ‘navigating nature,’ to match specimens with field guide pictures, and perhaps even to find a nature mentor. 

Knowledge brings me joy. Lack of knowledge also brings me joy – a joy of wonder – a joy in having the opportunity to find out, to learn, to expand. 

Yes, I love books. As I enter (cough, very early) middle age, I also feel called toward learning by doing far more than in earlier years. Learning by engaging — being out in the action. In the woods, with the deer and moss and trees and birds and wind and dirt and bugs. In a sense, the doing sheds divisions and separateness. In a sense, doing helps me become — and that’s when the learning happens.

Additional reflections deal more with feeling than thinking. I felt called to nature – or maybe, called back. I felt called in to nature. I felt a profound sense of being at home on these walks. 

A potent, overwhelming sensation kept welling up inside me – that these walks are my work. They are my life, or a significant part of it. At one point I told a friend, “I don’t want to take 30 walks – I want to take 300.” Over the course of taking these walks, the taking became a fundamental part of what I do in this world. They became an elemental piece of who I am. 

The mystics and elders of the East urge us to turn inward. As the Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh prompted, “the way out is in.” True, yes, I have gained enormously by embracing that lesson over the past two years. But the sages of the West — with eyes wide open, beholding the beloved, dazzling world of color and creation — also have a lesson: sometimes the way in is out.

I feel the tug and beauty of both traditions inside me. A harmony of stillness and action have come into my life. I will never be the same.

I walk. I walk in nature. I have many walking adventures ahead of me. 

Index of the Walks

Walk 1 – Central Park 
I felt Nature slowing me down

Walk 2 – Riverside, the Farnsley-Moremen Landing
Do we get days like this in Heaven?

Walk 3 – Gnadinger Park 
Nature thrived – even in Louisville’s smallest park

Walk 4 – Labyrinth at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary
I felt a sense of arrival

Walk 5 – Breslin Park
A walk that haunted me

Walk 6 – Our (Really, My Wife's) Garden
In which I reflect on some of the innumerable ways my incredible wife supports our family

Walk 7 – Thurman-Hutchins Park and Patriots Peace Memorial
Noise. Then immersion in thinking and writing

Walk 8 – Creasey Mahan Nature Preserve
The wildest walk yet

Walk 9 – Western Cemetery
In which I castigate the foolish and sentimental recounting of the death of "Stonewall" Jackson

Walk 10 – Jefferson Memorial Forest
I loop around a lovely lake in America’s largest urban forest

Walk 11 – Falls Of The Ohio State Park
“Now move at least a little out of my sun.”

Walk 12 – George Rogers Clark Park
Wildness and history. Wildness and patience

Walk 13 – Karen Lynch Park
Um, Karen deserves better

Walk 14 – a Walk in 'Nature'
Darn that nature is goo....oood for the body and soul!

Walk 15 – Blackacre Nature Preserve and Historic Homestead
Breath is LIFE!

Walk 16 – A.B. Sawyer Park
I want to wear these boots out

Walk 17 – Arthur K. Draut Park
Serendipity Sunday

Walk 18 – Contemplative Garden at Spalding University
Stillness, walking, writing and speaking

Walk 19 –  Chickasaw Park
We would not be human without water and wood

Walk 20 –  Half-Moon Green Space
Breathing life to words, calling them into a prayer

Walk 21 – Cave Hill Cemetery
I had to come see Dad

Walk 22 – Locust Grove
I don’t know Louisville

Walk 23 – Zachary Taylor National Cemetery
Reflections on faith, patriotism, leadership…and buglers

Walk 24 – Iroquois Park
I felt crestfallen and gloomy

Walk 25 – Whitehall
What a day!

Walk 26 – Papa John’s Park
Attack of the monster mallards!

Walk 27 – Memorial Park
I welcome more trees, more nature, more encounters with the World Tree in my journey of life

Walk 28 – A Spiritual Companionship Walk
Creating the space for stillness to reflect on sojourns in life

Walk 29 – Holy Hills Hermitage
The day was enough. I was enough

Walk 30 – Twisted Nature Bonsai Open House
I am a grasshopper, a novice, a beginner

Photography by Russell Smith. Amazon Affiliate links throughout the series. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.