Trail Walking- Katie Randazzo

    

The walk on the Noland Trail was hard for me. It was a great experience, but I think personally it was a little too un-natural. As stated in my previous blog post, I do practice walking as a spiritual discipline. However, I must be alone for this to happen. I really wanted to give our class trip to the Noland Trail a fair shot and tried to go in with the best attitude possible. I found myself in tune with the intricacies of nature and the notion that there is no way that all of the beauty surrounding us came from an accident or chance. As soon as we split off as a group, I walked quickly to lose the crowd. However, because it was a nice day, there were many runners and walkers who I was constantly dodging. Eventually, I ran along a close friend who is a classmate. We commented both on how it was hard to stay focused on God with other people doing so many different activities around us. So, we decided, that we were also made to fellowship with one another. We decided to take on the rest of the walk together. I remember gazing at the tranquility of the water, which always makes us feel small, attempting to understand our role in this life. We talked about many different things, light and heavy, that were on our hearts. The rhythmic act of walking and the tranquility of the nature around us allowed for conversation to be vulnerable and real. It was a great walk and we eventually came back onto the road 45 minutes later than we were supposed to. It seemed as though, through walking on the trail, we lost track of the world (especially time). Although I was minorly disappointed that the walk did not provide great personal time with the Divine, the fellowship found through walking was worth every minute. Does anyone else have a hard time in spiritual discipline if others are around? How do you cope with people being in a common place while you are trying to have personal time with God?