For better or worse I’m leaving tomorrow for my tramp to Toronto!

I am jet lagged, having arrived in from England in the wee hours this morning. My luggage didn’t arrive and it has some of the clothing I was hoping to take with me. Hopefully I can retrieve it by the end of the day. The weather forecast is not great. But I’m very excited!

A colleague of mine pointed me to the book A Walk to New York by Charles Wilkins, recounting his walking trip from Thunder Bay, Ontario to New York City in 2002. This little extract echoes at least somewhat my own thoughts:

I walked to New York because I felt like it-which is not an explanation people find easy to accept in this age of business plans, mission statements, five-point programs, and endless career or project objectives. I was fifty-three years old, had gotten myself into a rut, and needed a journey, the oldest and still perhaps the best way of resetting one’s compass and reintroducing the possibility of surprise.

As to why I went on foot, the idea was not to move as slowly as possible but merely at the pace of a more observant chapter in human history-to slow things down to where noticing becomes not just possible but unavoidable.

I’ll post photos, starting tomorrow.