Walk Around

LakeYou are a young girl playing on a log with your brother and dog The water in the lake clear and cold and deep, the rocks warm on the bank, little cottonwoods grow on the edge, in the distance: Mountains near enough to cast their shape on the waters surface. The water blue and green some rocks white, moved there in glacial time. One day you will be a woman Living in a city apartment And you will go down to a corner bar And you will meet a man, with curling dark hair And apricot eyes And you will tell him About the pink bathing suit you wore that day About how you called your dog giggles, but his name was Oliver How you tried to get him to float on the log About how warm the sun, and cold the water was About the moment your uncle and giggles fell off the log and shriekedAbout how your brother died that summer And you'd run down a winding road With the wind blowing in one ear,The grass cicadas drone in the other You’ll be shocked to feel so young Yet so far from something long ago Be alarmed and excited at the warm hand of this once stranger Holding your arm as your memories surge And you cry, and are held. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.walkaround.run

There’s finality to certain things in life. One kind has to do with naming something. Another has to do with speaking its name.Listen for some thoughts on quietude in vast spaces.https://walkaround.run/p/owhyee-countryPublic lands are in the process of being sold. Call your reps!(202) 224-3121https://www.backcountryhunters.org/take_action#/Owyhee Canyonlands: Road to 30 PostcardsMore on Northern Paiute Tribal Member, and FOTO Board Member, Wilson Wewa This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.walkaround.run

DONATIONSI am currently at a residency, in the midst of a self-funded project. Donations on Buy Me A Coffee, PayPal, or Venmo are all seriously appreciated right now—Thank you! In this episode I share a poem I wrote in Idaho last summer, reflections on the residency I'm attending, and some insight about remnants, joy, and grief—life, and death. I also have shared some photos from recent times.Listen, read, and subscribe on the website: https://walkaround.run! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.walkaround.run

If you think about it, what draws people toward something these days is often about reclaiming our humanity.What's healthful, and thus has gravity, are positive expressions about who we are, resiliency, and beauty, especially amidst hardship and grief. Dance, song, creating—expressions of our hands and bodies, and what we can do as humans. The modern craft movement is reweaving the tapestry of our culture—towards something that is functional and healthy, through our own hands and bodies.Mo Hohmann first learned to grow and weave willow in the mountains of Oregon from Peg Matthewson. A craft older than pottery, weaving comes from our ancestral past. Nowadays it's being brought into the light of the present by courageous and inspired makers like Mo and Peg."It's an innate human experience to be drawn by beauty. And beauty is pretty subjective. But it's my experience with the baskets that there is this gravitational pull towards what is beautiful. Because it feeds this deep need as human beings. It's a soul food right? It's something that brings a sense of belonging."Check Mo’s work on her Instagram and website: https://woventhresholds.com. Also, Mo offers online classes through Coyote Willow Schoolhouse, and plans to offer in person classes soon.https://linktr.ee/woventhresholds2025.03.08 Update: In the podcast, Mo discusses watertight baskets and her teacher Peg. However, Peg did not teach her about them, which may have been unclear in the original episode This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.walkaround.run

There's a moment in most of Miyazakis films, when the dialogue and often the music cuts, and a single character (usually the protagonist) is left alone in the raw and open experience of something. It takes mastery to convey a moment such as this, a moment of space and presence.This is the kind of moment I can relate to, when I know that I am who I am, when everything makes sense, when I know right from wrong, when there is magic in the landscape around me. But this type of moment is under relentless assault. https://www.walkaround.run/p/ma This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.walkaround.run

TranscriptThis morning I downloaded and logged into InstagramSomething I haven't done in a month or twoI mostly got off of the platform because I don't really think it's doing good things for humanityThe problem is so many people use itTheir communication and time is used up on itAnd many people have a picture of their reality from itAnd so to not participate is somehow to not exist as a creative personThis is something I've been ruminating on for yearsBut this is just such a short note because what I saw on there this morning, after I made a post about possibly selling some prints to support my schooling, was the two of the most extreme directions that humanity participates in, which are death and birthDeath and birthAnd I saw them in extremely gross expressionsI saw an explosion on a roadwayI saw a giant fireball engulfing cars in a place that I have no idea if I've ever been to or will ever go to or know any of the people or even if it's realBecause it very well and even likely could have been something that an application generatedI don't even like to use the word, but artificial intelligenceIt was probably thatIt probably wasn't even realAnother thing I saw was a video of someone getting slapped so hard that they passed outBut it wasn't only thatIt was an AI-generated image that showed his face collapsing in an unbelievable wayBut it wasn't realBut if someone's just scrolling and they're not paying attention and they see these things, they think, oh, this is realThat just happenedSomething I thought could never happen just happened in front of my very eyesAnd so that's deathThat's actually the death of the human spiritThat is complete collapse and destructivenessBasically to be creating fear through falsehoodAnd then on the other side, I saw a picture of a woman in a dressCould have been AII don't knowI don't know the contextI didn't click on the imageBut she was standing in a shimmery dressAnd so these images..I guess I should add that the dress was very tight-fittingSo basically what I saw was extreme violence and pornographyThat's what is being shown in the algorithmic feed on Instagram that people in general are just being subjected toSo what do we do with that? Well, I reported every single post that I sawIt's not going to change anythingIt's not going to do anythingBut it made me feel better to at least do somethingIn fact, it might make it worseIt only took me about five seconds to do these thingsBut I think it was worth itThe point of this, though, isn't to blame the Instagram platform and the creators for being evil, even though they areEven though the platform is destructive and horrific and terrible and uselessIt's also useful and creative and profound and abundantThe fact is, everything in the world ends up being related to these thingsTo skate along on the surface and believe that these experiences won't touch us is impossibleBut by interacting with the world through a screen, it seems like we can have some distance from the realitiesAnd we can just entertain ourselves by watching them instead of engaging with our livesAnd I think that this is extremely dangerous, and actually more dangerous than being shown violenceI think what's more dangerous is complacency and lack of connection and engagement with life, which is what these platforms really wantThey want you to just feel fear, feel lust, and then not do anything about itJust to consume more fear and more lustThat's the goalBut there's something profound beneath all of this, which is that the reality of fear and desire is inescapable in lifeBut the fact is, we have to be in control of our fears and desiresAnd it doesn't matter what the world shows us or serves us, what the algorithm displays, if we can't keep a center, there's no hopeRight now, it's election day, and the political stratum is basically birth and deathNot a positive form of birth and death, but the most deranged formsIs one better than another? I don't knowIt's all part of a cycleThe cycle doesn't want to endSo, we have to be the endI don't really know what that means, but I'm going to keep engaging with my internal world, with my internal workStaying true to what I know is important and what mattersI'm going to keep focusing on what is beautiful, and what seems powerful to meAnd I won't let my center be swayed by violence and lustThank you for listening. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.walkaround.run

Questioning my assumptions, and an encounter with Amanita, the Fly Agaric mushroom. Be sure to check out the images of the Nehalem and Wilson as well as the dunes at Bayocean Spit on the website This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.walkaround.run

Hello,Welcome to Walk Around. This is Hudson Gardner. It's been a little while.I've been out and about, traveling, hiking, running, doing things that I love, spending time with wonderful people, seeing beautiful things, having really beautiful conversations—learning about myself, learning about others, and by that, learning about this world we all co-create and exist in togetherI'm back in Port Townsend, where I live, and sitting in the pasture near a stand of trees on the edge of the field.It was my birthday a couple of days ago, actually, a week ago, and I have been coming back into some kind of personal awareness and depth inside of my own body and mind recently, thinking about things I've left behind for too long, things I've been incapable of doing, reflecting on life in general.Read more here at walkaround.run This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.walkaround.run

Transcript (includes errors)Hello.Welcome to Walk Around.This is Hudson Gardner.I am sitting at the edge of a field where the trees come out a little bit into the grass.And there's a little secret spot surrounded by hawthorn trees, there's an aspen that has a lot of young aspen around it.And down beneath the willow tree is a place that I come and make a little fire and have tea.I want to tell you a story today.Something that happened 10 summers ago, which feels like a different life, completely different time. A different world, a different person who was living and somehow that person was me and it was the same life in the same world.A hummingbird just landed on a twig of this little snag and he's just watching me.I almost feel like he's listening.So I'll tell him the story too.Ten years ago,I was living in southeast Nebraska in the town that I more or less grew up in called Lincoln.And I was getting ready to do something.I had been there a long time.My luck was running out.There was a general feeling of uncertainty, major change coming that I sensed.I had gotten out of a relationship that was,had been about three years long and it was a messy breakup and it was a hard time.My mom was living on a farm outside of town.And so I was staying in one of the guest rooms as I figured out what I was going to do with my 25-year-old life.And back then I felt that I didn't really have a conviction yet about who I was or what I had to offer I had the beginnings of it, but it was more like just a question and it's safe to say that I now know what that answer is but how to do it is still elusive.But back then I'doften go out to this zendooutside of town on a farm called Branched Oak Farm.It's a dairy farm with probably 15, 20 Jersey cows, some pigs, chickens.Pretty sure it's still going.And it was the best milk I've ever tasted in my life came from that place.Deep, deep yellow.I've never had anything like it.There's something about the pastures in the Great Plains that are just unlike anyother place from all those millions of years of bison and care.And one time I went out to the Zendo and I was in a strange headspace, I guess.I mean, who doesn't go to a Zendo in a strange headspace?And I went out there and before I went to the Zendo that day, I went out to thislittle reservoir nearby.It's the namesake of the farm, Branched Oak Reservoir, Branched Oak Lake.And below the Branched Oak Lake, there's a series of loess hills that were blown there by the wind over millennia.And there's grass and trees and little groves of flowers andI pulled off on the dirt road and in Nebraska you pull off on a dirt road 20 minutes outside of town and you can sit there for an hour and you don't see anybody else.It's a quiet place.And it was probably one of those days like today, beautiful, sunny, big puffy cumulonimbus clouds growing on the horizon, some kind of storm forming in the distance—the wind blowing across the grass and I went into this draw and I don't know what drew me there.I just had a feeling that I should go there and I walked up through the grass and I came to a grove of plants. And I had this intense feeling inside of me this anger at myself for being so old and so incompetent.I felt like I didn't know anything about the world,like I'd been wasting my life sitting around putting myself through school andcollege that I didn't want to go to,staying probably too long in a relationship that wasn't good for me or for the other person, unfortunately.And just being too comfortable.And so I had all those feelings when I walked into the draw and I knew I was on the brink of change.It felt that way.And I felt so angry and there was this plant, there's a big patch of them.And I thought I'm going to show that I have some competence.And I know what to do when I'm out in the wild places.And I took out my knife, which is something I would never do now.And I used it to dig up the root of one of these plants.And it was a pale white root.And it smelled like carrots.But it was not carrot.It was hemlock.And I ate it.And I didn't die.I've been thinking about why that happened.I've never really figured it out for all these years.And the fact is there's so many things to learn in the world and there's so many ways to learn.There's such an expansion of possibility, so much beauty.so much intricacy, so much information.And then it's also so simple.And because of that, it's so heartrendingly elegant and it's so beautiful.And it's taken me 10 years to find out what the simplistic, elegant message from that plant was for me.And it happened just a few days ago.I was harvesting hawthorn flowers with a friend.And there's this kind of back corner of this tree.pasture I live on and it's all overgrown with roses and blackberries and it's allbrambly and thorny and there's a bunch of hawthorn trees back there and we werekind of going through this shadowy shady part and as I was going through there withmy orchard ladder and picking bag moving on to the next tree I suddenly realized Iwas surrounded by hemlockAnd it wasn't even that I saw them.It was almost that I just sensed that they were there.And I didn't even pause.I just thought, well, hello.Hello again.It's been about 10 years.It's definitely been 10 years since that plant showed up that intensely to me.And there it was again.And in this case, the hawthorn had led me there.As the next few days went by, I thought about my discovery of that plant here.And I thought about that time a long time ago where I nearly could have died and about my encounter with it thistime and what it might be telling meAnd I believe that there's a part of life and a part of us that if a person is notliving according to their code or to something that matters to them,we're really on the process of finding that out or being genuine and honest thatthe body itself and maybe our spirit in some way will begin toa series of self-destructive mechanisms because there's no point in living life without meaning.And somehow our bodies know that more than our rational minds.And at that point, 10 years ago, I was led to that plant because my bodyMy senses, my spirit were saying, no, you cannot stay here anymore.You can't just live out your life in this little corner of the world.You can't be comfortable anymore.You need to go out and find yourself.And so I did.I planned to move to Oregon and then two weeks,maybe even,I think it was two days before that I decided to move to Vermont and I didn't knowa single person in the state.I think a friend of mine was traveling through fortunately.And so I connected with her and somehow I found a place to be.But that started off this whole chain reaction,this trajectory of where I am now,which is someone who has an understanding of themselves and their abilities and whofeels some level of competence in the world.I've gone from misidentifying hemlock and almost dying to having a relationshipwith the plant and to knowing hundreds of plants and to beingon the path of a physician or a healer or someone who helps others.And that's the type of competency that's hard to achieve.But I believe that I will achieve it.And so now I don't even need tohave my spirit endanger me in order to know that I'm at another point of departure.All I need to do is see that plant and think, oh yes, this guy again.I just need to pay attention.As you all know,or some of you,or maybe not most,but a few,I have been in the process of entering school for acupuncture and Chinese medicinethis fall.And I recently decided that it was too much.I don't want to go into debt.I don't want to compromise my health for three years at a program that's going to run me ragged andI mean,if you think about it,it's going to possibly push me to achieve things I never thought I could,but not on my own terms.So I don't know what the point of that is.I think I'm going to find my own way to practice medicine.And, um, a friend of mine is starting a cohort that I'm going to join and we'll see where that goes.But it won't lead to a license.So it's going to be curious to see how it will work out for me.But I believe in myself and in my abilities.I believe in what I see and understand.And I believe in living a life on my own terms as much as I can.I believe in freedom.And I think by living this path, my most genuine path, that I'll be saved from despair and depression.And I will eventually find belonging.That's the message that I've learned from Hamlock.Thank you for listening. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.walkaround.run

As spring has gotten into gear around here, I've been noticing the general abundance of plant life, and weather, and birds, and social engagements—and it's got me reflecting on different kinds of abundance, overabundance, scarcity, relationships, community... From that corner of the human experience of consuming and creating the dynamic between those two aspects of our nature, you could say...Listen & Read More This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.walkaround.run

This podcast covers the issue of addiction.If you are in need of help, call the national hotline, 988.Transcript (may contain errors)There's a bell that I've taken around with me wherever I've livedI can't remember where I got it, maybe in Portland at the Japanese GardenAnd I've often hung it up outside and the sound has become familiar, even as all the places I've lived have changed for so longAnd that familiar feeling just hit me as I rode up this little hill through an orchard towards the cabin that I'm living in these daysI never really realized I'd developed a familiarity with it until that momentNow I'm standing out kind of more towards the field behind the cabin looking at a willow that's flowering and the first bumblebees I've seen this year are collecting nectar and pollen from the flowersThat's pretty hopefulBack in the forest behind the edge of the woods there's a giant ant nest, the biggest I've ever seen actuallyIt's probably home to hundreds of thousands of antsIt's probably four or five feet wide, a couple feet tallIt's been there who knows how longOld growth ant nest, ant pileRead more or listen here: https://www.walkaround.run/p/thank-you-for-listening This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.walkaround.run

A week ago I sent my friend Jen a poem I wrote called Selfheal. They told me that they too have a meaningful connection with the plant, and then sent the above image back. When I saw it, for some reason these words came: "Believe in your next steppingstone."Jim Harrison interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3L3STymsjeg&t=932sListen and read more: https://www.walkaround.run/p/the-most-important-thing-about-lifeJen's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chthoneural_/ This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.walkaround.run

Recorded near Port Townsend, Washington. A short rumination on movement, landscapes, and people—how they all connect. I read a poem called By Firelight, and discuss a run I took on Christmas Eve. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.walkaround.run

Transcript (Includes typos and run on sentences)Welcome to Walk Around. This is Hudson Gardner.I've always been attracted to edges.And I feel like I've written about it.About edges, I guess, many times, trying to understandWhy I'm always kind of going along to edges and right now I'm sitting right at the edge of light in open oak woodland in western Oregon in the Willamette Valley.It's a really rare type of place these days, actually, in this area.It used to be the dominant ecotone or guild, kind of a mix of sedges and grasses, reeds in the more marshy areas, madrone, old standing doug fir.and kind of some open meadows and kind of like a prairie savanna.I think they call it an oak savanna.And it's one of the most beautiful types of environment that I think exists in the world.You have these huge gnarled oak trees that have branches going every different direction and they're so articulate and so complicated and so beautiful and so stable it seems, so strong.And then you have the grasses in between them and younger oaks coming up and flowers when it's raining in the spring and all these insects that you can hear.Stellar’s Jays going from dead trees, from a snag to a snag looking around for things to eat.Woodpeckers and hawks.And then you have this forest edge here that's just a solid wall of big doug fir and some elderberries and young ash trees.And here I am sitting right at the edge and the edge of the light thinking about how I'm so attracted to spots like this once again.I was once talking to a friend who was an ecology major in college, and she was mentioning that when we were stopped somewhere, we were standing with some trees behind us looking out on an open space—and she said “it feels good to be here.” And we both started talking about: why is that?Why does it feel good to be in a spot like this?With the trees behind and open space in front and I think it's a very old feeling.It's a feeling of possibility and openness in front and then behind safety and shelter and places to hide and get out of the elements and stuff and also another different type of food and resource available.And I think that's why standing on the edges of forests and fields has always felt good to me.Maybe it's this very old kind of a feeling.And then there's all these edges in life, like transition, which I feel like in a weird way for the last 10 years or something, I've been in some state of transition where I haven't ever really touched down and stayed wherever I've been.I feel like there's many people who listen to this podcast who've met me in one of the many places that I've lived and then moved on from.And transition is really hard, actually, because everything's up in the air.You have to find all the things.Whenever you get to the next place you're going, you're constantly considering about what you need.Friends aren't just a given.Community isn't just a given.It's this thing you're having to build actively every time you move somewhere else.Being on the edge like that for so long, like I have, I feel like has been really hard.And it makes me wonder why I prolonged this kind of lifestyle, endlessly moving around.I feel like I've talked about this before,It's all led me to where I am now which is I think been an essential and really important and extremely I guess extremely necessary pathIt's like the more situations I've found myself in and moved on from, the more I've learned.And not just touching down and staying somewhere has really opened my world to a massive possibility of people and interactions and ways of life and ways of thought and it's really cleaned my brain out and my body I think in many ways.and kind of detoxified me from some of my harsher tendencies towards judgment and criticism and things like that.To set out into the world really makes a person realize how insignificant they are.Especially if you go somewhere and you're always having to rebuild your life wherever you stop.You're new to everyone.You have to explain your story.After a while it starts to get old and you want to just rest and be somewhere and have community and it's hard.I guess I would call that an edge too.Edges are important because it's where interchange happens.If you look at the edges of a cell orA bioregion or the ocean or a field in a forest, that's where all the activity is happening.Or a lot of it.A lot of the biodiversity, for example, in ecology is in the edges of places like estuaries or where rivers meet the sea or the edges of forests, as I was mentioning.because the light penetrates and allows different things to grow and it brings creatures there and then they have interactions with the plants and other creatures and if you often look around on the edges of fields and you see old trees cut back in the forest there will almost always be a hawk in them if you look long enough because the hawks are watching the edge of the field for mice where the mice come to get the fallen grains and seeds from the grassAnd so it's this great interchange.It's this place of turbidity and interaction and commotion.The edges are where it's really unsettled, which is, I guess, why it feels unsettled in some ways to be there, but maybe also why I relate to the edges of places so much.The center, on the other hand, represents, if you think about it, it represents home, it seems.The center, the middle, the place that we move outwards from.It seems like it represents some kind of potential point.And then the edges are where we reach out to, where I found myself reaching out to in my journeys.I think I have a lot of home trauma because II haven't really had much of a sense of home since I was eight or nine years old.I kind of had to build it over the years and then deconstruct it and build it again and it's been pretty hard.Wow, I just saw a pileated woodpecker.I wonder if you can hear that.They're huge.They're almost as big as a hawk.That's special.So this beautiful oak woodland is part of a Catholic Abbey.It's a monastery for monks, actually.Our Lady of Guadalupe Franciscan Monastery, I think.Or Trappist.It's a Trappist Abbey.Not a monastery.Trappist Abbey.But it's a beautiful place and I've come here in many seasons.I haven't come here in late summer in the evening though and it's just so beautiful, the light and the lack of people and all the animals are going about their evening business and could ask for nothing more.I've been working I'd say 10 to 12 hour days, maybe sometimes 13.Six days a week at a winery and it's been really hard.I think partially because I see it as very much a dead end kind of a job.I'm not intending to go into wine nor do I really like wine.It was just the only job that I could find around here without having to drive into Portland and get a job there because I'm living at my mom's house.because my plans to go to college fell through for my acupuncture degree.So I'm in this weird purgatory at the moment of not being able to go to school but kind of waiting for an entire year, which isn't really very much fun.So I'm working at this winery and the only thing that's really keeping me sane has been getting to know the people that I'm working with and getting to know their struggles and listening to them and talking with them and trying to kind of get to know how to be a temporary ephemeral friend to them because for the most part maybe totally I won't see any of them afterthe work is over most none of them really live anywhere near me and we don't really have that much in common though there's a couple people that I feel like I could be friends with but they don't really live around here well they don't live here at all they live in a bus we have a lot in common but um it's been rough because I haven't really had any time to do something like come to this woodland andJust sit and think and reflect and kind of puzzle out what my next step is.Some of the things I've been thinking about a lot are how my art and creativity is such a solitary kind of a practice.I mean, I don't really interview people that much, which I guess I could do more.um but my writing and photography i mean all of it's done alone for the most part or i guess sometimes kind of with you know walking around with a friend or a significant other or something but um it's not like i do something for people two of the people i work with are tattooers and so their art is very muchThe art that they choose to turn into tattoos is very much something for others.And that's very useful.It's a very applicable kind of art.Flexible, mobile, you can get paid for it.Especially if you're as skilled as they are.But for writing, it's like nobody even reads anymore.I mean there's these statistics which I feel like are just booked that have been coaxed by publishers that are like, well actually more people read than ever before.That's gotta be nonsense.I feel like, unless it's people that I don't know about or something, I feel like less people must be reading than ever before.Or at least they're not reading with much attention.They're more like skimming stuff or something.Maybe I'm wrong.Who knows?But it's a weird time to be a writer.And that's why I have this podcast.Because being a writer is likeWow.Good luck.Um, so I've been thinking, you know, I would really like to offer medicine to people.Um, once I get licensed and stuff and that's going to take four years.So boy,what a process I found myself in.I think purgatory is a pretty good word for it.At least it feels that way.And there's this other thing, I don't know if it's just my age or it's my social group or what's going on, but I just feel like more than ever before my social connections and ability to kind of make friends is really lacking.There's a couple people I've reached out to that I feel like are maybe going to work out as somebody to meet up with and become friends with, but I feel like as people get older, it's like most people don't do the thing I've done, where I've moved around so much, and they've just stay

This is Hudson Gardner. Welcome to Walk Around.Right now I am sitting in the shade. It's really hot today. So I’m sitting next to a guest house I'm living in, looking out across an unmowed, untended field. It's kind of like a little pasture. This is actually a place I've been coming since I was four or five years old. The first time I came here, I can't even remember. But it's my aunt's house.And it's such a beautiful place. It's one of the only places that has stayed the same for my whole life in terms of something that I returned to, which is really neat and rare for me.I've been walking around a lot recently. Surveying for what some people call invasive weeds, walking the prairies in northeastern Oregon....For full transcription & beautiful images, please visit the Walkaround.run website: https://www.walkaround.run/p/dont-worry This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.walkaround.run

GlobemallowYear after year after yearSmooth rocks smoothenedBy water and even sand in wind and even windJuniper scrub grew to a tree                split and diedRemains as snag             mostly still aliveRodent holes take refuge in sandy soilBeneath the globe mallow crop waiting for the seven year piñon to dropSeeds. Many young evenOaks in little gullies of green grass meadows hidden pond and aspen stands big Mesatops catch the rain as ifSome rock giant has been slowly gardeningThese clefts for a billion yearsBut groves of bright orange mallow and yellow and blue penstemonAgainst the rain fingers touching the horizon, blurring the distanceAnd us journeying along an imperfectFamily group forged and beaten still smoking from the birthWithout a place to call home together so we wander, create traditions and stories, move onward to places never heard ofA group of young souls just born into the still smoking mud of which we feel the heat of what we were also molded fromAnd a rag of trash wound up in an ancient sagebrush bush that I take three stems from and show them to Todd for a sniff, stuff myMouth full of globemallow flowers and gain sustenance from the land and I’ll tell you I’ve given up on meaning and instead work with how I find feelings out in places both empty and full suchMoments of presence to convey a kind of resonance that doesn’t need these words for you to come close to itBut it’s like a fire stoked by attention only and itGoes out and everything is dark in that realm that you don’t know or see into become likeThe old ones who rest in the hills gardening their patch near the piñons and living with theLeast chipmunks and the mule deer and the visitor who comes for cota from the house overPuts his feet up by the door and stares out at the rain fingers and the mallows and the piñons and junipers and rodents and distant cities and collapse and reforming and smallnesses and bignesses and the Colorado river and the lack of water in the lakes and he sits with his friend staring out and and says only for hours: after all these years…..PS. Thanks for reading. Funds are tight right now so if you feel like it, throw a few dollars my way. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.walkaround.run

In many ways my experience is as vast or constrained as I allow it to be. I mused on this idea in this week’s show. My conclusion? Walk around, and look around. And maybe be slower to be define how something is, or isn’t. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.walkaround.run

It's rare to find a flow in life where all needs align. Usually, some needs have to be traded for others. And sometimes it's hard for me to even know what it is I really need.Talking with my friend Blaine Benitez on this episode, I think he's someone who is working to understand the ebb and flow of life, pursuing his needs, and the discovery of them, in an intuitive way. And there's something beyond all that too, something impractical, purely biological, in the way and for the reasons he runs. To me, Blaine is an artist of movement.To build an altar for something that others see as unproductive, to shape your life around that idea or pursuit, takes a lot of belief in that thing. It takes a kind of patience or endurance that is found all on your own. But the flow of motivation is a collaborative act. Blaine is inspired by his friends, the mountains he lives near, and the feeling he gets from running in them.In the podcast we talk about taking it easy, but taking it. How the idea of running all 11,000 foot peaks in the Wasatch outside SLC came about, and what it was like to do that in one push. We talk about how we both go outside every day, how Blaine runs every day, about sleeping and napping, sponsorship and priorities in life, how endurance doesn't need to be an intense thing. We talk about how a mindful, content feeling can be accessible in the next breath, the next step, and the idea that resistance uses energy, and creates tension. And we end talking about running beyond reason.Be sure to listen to the whole episode if you have time, it's really worth it. And feel free to donate here to help me keep making things like this: DonateBlaine's AccountsInstagramStravaYouTubeIndex* 3:50 - How Blaine found his way to Salt Lake City* 7:00 - Figuring out how to camp for free, and how to travel to trial and error* 9:40 - Making a living* 12:10 - Stability vs flexibility* 14:10 - How the idea of the Wasatch 11's came about* 20:00 - Waking up on an 11,000' summit and running into work that same morning* 21:00 - Memories of the Wasatch traverse* 22:50 - Wasatch Traverse: Being present and easing tension* 24:40 - Focusing on the next step, and having a healthy internal environment* “A really mindful, content feeling is accessible in the next breath that you take, so it's nice to spend that long in such a vulnerable and physically demanding state”* 26:16 - "Take it easy, but take it" - Running without suffering* 27:10 - Gary Snyder - "Watch the ground below your feet speed by"* 29:30 - "You can always take another step, you can always alleviate some tension"* 30:10 - Asking hard questions about making things and being someone* 31:20 - The use of the word endurance, and its relationship to patience* "Endurance doesn't have to be an intense thing"* 32:10 - Running every day* 34:00 - Finding a flow in running* 37:00 - Running as a way toward mental wellbeing* Running is primarily a tool for me to navigate internal framework/mental health* Instead of thinking about something, I turn myself outwards* 39:40 - Going outside every day* "Running outside is a biological need. I absolutely need it just like I need food"* "Running is a way to fulfill biological needs and to fulfill a purpose"* 43:30 - How running and athletic can be simple, and without goals* 52:50 - Dan Price and living life on your old terms* 54:20 - Injuries* 59:00 - Getting sleep* 1:05:00 - Hardest runs that Blaine has done, and the Bonneville Shoreline trail* 1:18:00 - Traven's Dragon Wing Visualization in the Quad Lock (Rock) Race* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PmcNmzdjbE* https://www.youtube.com/@EnduranceSlack/videos* 1:21:00 - Fear and the unknown* 1:38:00 - Sponsorship and priorities* 1:45:40 - Running beyond reason* When I'm at work or when I'm around other people I can be a lot more pleasant person around my coworkers* 2:00:00 - How resistance takes energy This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.walkaround.run

TranscriptThis morning I went for a run in the woods, on these really beautiful trails that are used by snowmobiles.The organization that maintains the trails and works with landowners to allow access is called VAST - The Vermont Association of Snow Travelers.I'm not really sure if you're supposed to walk on them, but I don't really mind it, I meanI'm not a snowmobiler. I don't think it messes up the trails when they're really hard to walk on them, or to run on them. And they're really the only trails I could walk on right now without snowshoes around here. So I just kind of do it.The run goes up the hill beyond the yard and down into a field and it crosses a little road. And then it goes into some woods. The woods are pretty young, I'd say between 10 and 50 years old at the absolute maximum of the trees. There are a lot of beech trees with this canker disease, they have some yellow birch, silver birch. And a couple of maple trees, paper birch, and once in a while there's a pine tree. Kind of a scraggly woods over there.But the trail is nice, it goes up and down following the grade of a hill. And it eventually gets to this really large field that's owned by a family called the Mudges. And they are summer people, so they aren't here right now. There, the field opens up, the view opens up to something more than you'd expect in Colorado or something. There's a split rail fence and a grove aspen trees and you can see a far ridge with trees on top. If you took a photo of the right way, and people didn't really notice that you're surrounded by deciduous forests, you probably would think that you are in the Rockies or something.And the magic thing about it is of course, besides the snowmobiles that sometimes go by, there's no one on the trail ever. Because, this part of Vermont is pretty remote. It's not really close to anything, it's about an hour away from everything. And that makes it nice in some ways, but also pretty lonely.I ran up a steep hill after that through a different set of woods after crossing another road. And into this area that was a logging tract that's owned by owned by this guy named Hemenway who owned a couple thousand acres of forests around here. And he is a good forester type of a person. He contracted out to companies that just do very careful cutting. And so there's a lot of diversity in his woods. And he himself loved to walk in them. And there's been some memorials about him because he did such a beautiful job of preserving access and the woods themselves.And so those woods are pretty nice, they're pretty well thinned, and some pretty old trees in there that he left, probably told the loggers to leave some of the old trees, which is really good for wildlife.It's quite a steep hill over there, and running in the snow makes it really hard. And I think it's probably 500 feet vertical from the bottom to the top of it, maybe a little bit more. And the whole course is around 1000 or 1200. I would say it's about three and a half miles one way.I was trying to run in a pretty decent pace today. But running is always weird. I just I never know how fast I'm gonna run. Maybe it's because I have a phone that's like five years old. Doesn't really record stuff very accurately. But anyway, it was a good run.As I was coming back down to the big field. I started thinking about something that has been on my mind for a while. Which is this experience that I had when I got a vasectomy recently because this morning I had talked to my friend Beau, who's a Chinese medicine doctor, acupuncturistand herbalist, Alexander Technique practitioner, Tai Chi practitioner, lots of different things he's, he's into and really skilled at, and I was doing a consult with him. And so something I wanted to ask him about was this experience that happened during the vasectomy that I just had. I went to the Planned Parenthood in Burlington because I've only had good experiences with Planned Parenthood. With my girlfriend's needs, different gynecological needs over the years. And everything went pretty well.But there was this moment when I was on the table, when the nurse practitioner had cut the wrong part of some tissue, that was supposed to be the vas deferens. And the situation with this surgery is that they have to find the vas deferens by palpating them, touching them with the fingers, and then essentially using forceps or some kind of a clamp to pull them out of the pelvis.And it's extremely traumatic.I didn't really know that going into it. But it's like the worst pain I've ever felt, probably is like getting shot in the pelvis or getting kicked or hit with something really hard.And so she had to do that sensation, where she grabbed the vas deferens with some kind of forceps like three times instead of just two. And it did some damage.In the moment, what happened was I had what's called vessel vaso-vagal syncope, which means that you're fainting. It's like a state of shock. So what happened was, my hands and my feet started to go numb.And I started to get really cold and the pulse and the pulse oximeter on my finger, which is those little clamp-clamp things that measure your pulse in your blood pressure and stuff. Actually started to stop working because there was no blood in the extremities anymore. It started pool in the organs. Basically what was happening is I was undergoing a shock—because I saw some indecisiveness in the nurse and I was wondering how long this procedure was going to be prolonged because it was extremely uncomfortable. And I was wondering if she had done it right. I was wondering if she had hurt me.I have pretty good control over my physical reactions to things. But I guess this was a little too much. And I started to kind of go into that state of fainting.And it was really strange because the nurse and her assistants just wouldn't look at me. I think they felt embarrassed or afraid. And so they didn't look at me. They looked at the monitor. And the monitor wasn't reading anything. And so they were frustrated with the technology not showing them my vitals.And I felt disconnected from the experience.And I felt afraid of course.And in the end, what helped me was they said one thing I could do at the beginning was squeeze the assistants hand, so I reached out and took their hand and squeezed it. And it felt really warm and strong.And that's what brought me back.The nurse had me breath some oxygen from a tank, and that didn't really seem to do anything. But squeezing the person's hand, feeling that warmth and that comfort, was really what worked. And I remember at the end, standing up feeling fine. Saying something to nurse like, well, I guess this is a learning experience for all of us. Which probably wasn't the right thing to say. But I don't know, I can be kind of straightforward sometimes. And maybe she needed to be humbled a little bit. I don't know.What I felt like when I was laying there was that I wanted to get away from the experience. Things flooded through my mind. Places that I've been beautiful places that I've kind of left a part of myself, so to speak. Places I've hiked, camped, slept, places outside in nature, really. And it was really interesting that my mind went to this specific meadow, in the Gros Ventre wilderness, in northern Wyoming. It's extremely unused and extremely remote, even though it's close to a couple of national parks. And my mind went there to that place in that moment of fear, which I found pretty interesting.And then, as I recovered from reflecting on that experience, I started to feel bad about myself, I actually apologized to the nurses after the procedure, because I didn't want to inconvenience them, because I felt weak.Now, weakness comes from fear, or fear, creates weakness, or fear is part of the feeling of weakness. Anyway, they're related somehow. And I've always felt weak. I've never felt like a strong, physically strong person. And so weakness is something that I've always battled with. Athletic activities and stuff have never come naturally to me. And I never really was fast or strong, or any of those things that that men and boys are often expected to be. And so I've always felt kind of weak overall.And so when I was laying there, and I couldn't handle the pain, seemingly, of this operation, I felt weak. And I thought I had long ago left behind that kind of feeling. Because when I first left my home, which happened to be Nebraska, I started going on trips across the country alone in my car, and I wouldn't choose the direction, except West, and I wouldn't really choose a path and make a plan. And I wouldn't really decide on campsites or anything like that. My only rule was that I didn't want to pay for camping.And when a person is 18, or 19, or are in their early 20s, and they're pretty young and inexperienced, the world seems like kind of a scary place. At least it did to me. I had a lot of anxiety about my car breaking down, or getting lost or getting stuck somewhere, somebody yelling at me and telling me to leave or—just kind of unfounded fears that have since I've learned about now, that don't make any sense, but they were there. And I've always wondered about where those fears came from. And now even though I'm perfectly comfortable with traveling like that now, not paying for camping, camping wherever I find a flat space, on bike or on foot or in a car or whatever, just finding some pull off and going into the trees—my favorite kind of camping now, which used to terrify me. I used to not sleep when I did that. But that kind of a fear I thought I'd gotten over. Yet when I was on the table, experiencing that shock from the surgery kind of going wrong—I realized I hadn't. Or at least that fear still lives inside of me somewhere because I still felt weak, which is really the source of where that fear came from.In other words, I felt bad about myself.I felt like I wasn't good enough or strong enough.A friend of mine is a really good runner. I can't even expl

A short episode about a piece of music by Dario Lessing that I have been enjoyingElfe by Dario Lessinghttps://open.spotify.com/track/5DVGcnv54vwvqFxYg5rH7n This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.walkaround.run