Jim Olson 4/18/24

Henry David Thoreau was to have said that “The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it”. 

As I have gotten older and perhaps slightly wiser with the years, I have come to know that my price for “peacefulness” need not be an exchange of expensive amounts of time out of my life.  My troubled soul can find peace, in short order, when I exchange time out of my life for walking the land…it is a valuable exchange where personal peace is found at a profit far above the price.

I grew up in Minnesota where the variable four seasons did not temper nor hinder outdoor activities, and I came to know early that “walking the land” did not require much cost in time, distance, or anything else in which for me to generate peace.  I need not a journey of Homer in walking the land. I need only undeveloped space, open or wooded, wet or dry, flat or hilly; it does not matter.  I need my gaze unencumbered of structure, with time not equating to the level of peace, but the space itself as the catalyst for peacefulness as I walk slowly along.   

As in the neighborhood I grew up in, my home of the last 43 years has areas of woods around it, including a small slice of wooded green between our property and the closest neighbor in the back.  All I need is a short walk through my backyard to that wooded area, with then a turn toward the larger wooded areas where cleansing steps and breaths regain for me a peaceful center.  While larger tracks of land found during camping, fishing, and hunting outings produce the same results and are grander for sure, they are neither more or less important to me than the smaller parcels I may walk in search of peace.

Walk the land, the definition of that is yours, and find not the exchangeable price, but the profit in achieving some peacefulness.