Collective Walking - How it all began - Part I
Walking as an outdoor activity
I have always loved walking. My first introduction to it was through vacations with my parents, which tended to be centered around walking mostly in flat territory. While my brother complained about walks and had to be bribed with a promise of cake at the end, I loved to move and spend time in nature. I felt a freedom outside that I missed when spending time indoors.
Walking to spend quality time with friends
In my teens, I discovered cycling as another fun and social outdoor activity. For a while I spent a lot of my free time cycling, until - while on a bicycle tour through Italy with a friend, his bike broke down into an irreparable state. Instead of cutting our vacation short, we sent the bicycles home via train and spent our remaining time hiking in the Italian Alps. This was my introduction to hiking in the mountains. I loved everything about it: the exercise, the views, the challenge of finding a manageable route, and of course having a companion who loved all that as much as I did. We had exhilarating moments during that week. And, a deep love for walking in the mountains was planted in my heart.
Walking as a balance to my professional work
I went off for walking breaks whenever I could, while I worked as a research assistant in Computer Science, first at a German university and then in Belfast. In Great Britain and Northern Ireland I was in good company with my love for hiking. There are so many happy hikers there. In Belfast I joined a hiking club and spent at least one Sunday a month in the beautiful Mourne Mountains in the company of hiking friends.
My next professional move, which brought me to New Jersey as a Computer Trainer and Instructional Designer, opened new hiking opportunities. Highlights included walking a part of the Appalachian Trail and trekking halfway down the Grand Canyon.
As is the case for many, I assume, walking continued to be an activity that I only engaged in on the week-ends or during vacation time. Sometimes work took over and there were no week-end breaks. Then after a while my body spoke up with symptoms or simply by feeling unwell. And, all I had to do to get better was to spend some quality time in nature.
This went on until it was clearly time for a more substantial change in my life, in order for me to feel more balanced and happy. Back in 2005, I thought that creating my own business would do the trick. And in a way it did, though somewhat indirectly.
In 2008, my work as an E-Learning Consultant brought me to Egypt. Egypt with its intensity of colours, sounds and scents first overwhelmed me, and then awakened me to a greater capacity to sense and feel. It felt as if parts of me that had been dormant, came alive.
In contrast, the work environment that I found myself in, felt anything but sensual and alive. I perceived it as unfriendly and controlling. Without the space for independent and creative decisions, or a group of people I could discuss my work with, I became very stressed and unhappy.
I realized how unfulfilled I was with my work under these conditions and something in me snapped. I decided to leave this particular work arrangement. Leaving this work project felt like a failure at the time, though looking back now, it appears as a key step in my journey of liberation. My decision allowed me to follow my heart and stay in Egypt which captured my heart.
Walking as a means to connect to the land and its people
First I started to engage with studies of Arab culture and language. Then, one day a friend invited me and other friends on a trip to Sinai. We went on the famous hike up Mount Sinai in the middle of the night to see the sun rise from the top of the mountain. It was a memorable spectacle. Even more memorable, for me, was an inner calling that I received while walking down. I heard a voice inside of me saying, ‘You will live here’ - and I followed the call.
A truly magical phase of my life began. A Bedouin showed up who was happy to rent his simple house to me. His family ‘took me in’ and I could roam the mountains as much as I wanted. Ideas emerged about how I could make a living here. Naturally I started to cooperate with the local sheik and organized trips into the mountains and deserts for tourists from Cairo and Europe.
Here walking became the basis of the work I did. It also emerged as a way to introduce visiting tourists to this land, its people and the simple and beautiful way of living here.
I felt like an ambassador of the simple Bedouin life. And I could have continued to live like this forever.
We roamed the mountains with groups of 3-5 people accompanied by our Bedouin guide, who would guide us by day and cook our food on the fire in the evening. We slept under the stars in one of the Bedouin gardens in the mountains (special to this area). In the morning we set off again, ready to discover another of the beautiful valleys or to hike up one of the many mountain peaks.
This life came to a fairly abrupt end in 2011 due to the political turmoil in Cairo. The number of tourists coming to Sinai dropped significantly and I returned to Germany.
Photo by Mariam Soliman on Unsplash
