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Comment by totetsu | Hacker News Reader

This process of observant conversation with others seems good for noticing the context and shape of yourself as a social human. I wonder if this kind of purposeful activity can be applied to spending time outdoors, with non-human things, to gain self awareness of what a human is. My musician friends tell me that if you think classical music is relaxing, you're not paying enough attention. Perhaps the same can be said about going for a walk.

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I think you're onto something here ;)

An earlier draft of this essay had a whole section about communing with nature and what it meant to go for a quiet walk by yourself.

At its core, this whole essay is an ode to paying attention to yourself, and part of paying attention to yourself is paying attention to the environment that you are a part of—the space around you, the sounds you hear, the stimuli affecting your thoughts, etc. etc.

You might enjoy this little idea I've started called the Silent Hike Society. It's exactly what it sounds like, but here's an explainer: https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/180405719200378...

You may also resonate with this meditation on walking that I made a while back: https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/178469900116070...

This is a great idea.

A walk is just another way to medidate, at least for me. I've discovered long walks four years ago and they became my one of my favourite hobbies in a blink. There is some paradoxality in this: many of the walks are organized events where thoudsands of people take part. I however always go alone and do not take my headphones. So it is just me, dozens of kilometers of the road and some nice volunteers at checkpoints. Hours and hours of me being with myself. I think for the brain is kind of like the sleep, time to reorganize, recconect and clean-up, just while being awake.

Our most popular organizer of such events, Trenkturas, come up with an idea during COVID lockdowns (going out was not forbidden, but public gatherings were and are still restricted): solo hikes. You select a route, a time slot, pay a couple of euros and get the link to the route, so you can follow it on your phone. This idea proved to be very popular.

I went for a two day solo walk at the end of April. I took the same path I had taken the same time the year before. At the hight of pandemic uncertainty it was a reprieve from the constant worry(even though there were no local cases). Being conspicuously foreign I had a few interesting reactions from people along the way. Some old folks just telling me to be safe from animals, some kids dutifully guiding me to the village bus stop on the way back wanting to see inside my pack, and trying to remember social distancing, and one couple on an abandoned walking track being completely surprised to see me and rushing past with towels held to mouth. My big takeaway was how wide and imposing roads are, how noisy cars are, how much people miss when they drive from place A to B, how much things can change year to year, how far away the next town really is if you're using human energy, and how so many peoples experience of the landscape is buy all the right gear from the magazine and then go somewhere to kill something.

You might like this address by Nipun Mehta called, "Paths Are Made for Walking": http://www.dailygood.org/story/236/paths-are-made-by-walking...

I can't listen to classical music and do something else at the same time. It has to be onw or the other. Minimal techno, on the other hand, I can work to that.

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