The walking cure: Pep and power from walking : how to cure disease by walking

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I first heard about the Innu Meshkenu (Innu Trail) project in 2010. Vollant and I spoke on the phone, and he invited me to join a walk. Then he returned to his busy life, lecturing at the Université de Montréal medical school, conducting clinics in remote Aboriginal communities, spending time with his three children, and walking more than 1,000 kilometres a year, while I got bogged down at my desk.

The solution seems plausible in theory, but crucial details are questionably left out to give it credibility. June's theory rests on the notion that Alicia had to have survived because of the radiation, not because she amputated her arm in time. The only known way to prevent the transmission of the Wildfire virus from a walker bite into a human's bloodstream is by amputating the location of the bite. It only takes minutes for the virus to spread throughout the body, but the exact number is still unknown. For all intents and purposes, Alicia survived because she did the smart thing and amputated her arm. After all, she did spend the following months suffering from high fevers, likely because the amputation wasn't a clean one and she developed a bone infection. Other diseases don't just go away because a zombie apocalypse happens. Your toboggan is an important symbol!” thunders Vollant, a preacher on the pulpit. He wants the walkers to stop asking logisticians to shuttle their sleds. “Your ancestors pulled 200 pounds in their toboggans. Without them, they would have died. Even if you only carry your water bottle in your sled, take it! We are proud people. We don’t want snowmobilers passing by and saying, ‘Look at those Indians. They’re letting machines do their work.’” After a one-day break on the Kitigan Zibi reserve, we have permission from Quebec’s Fédération des clubs de motoneigistes to travel along one of the province’s main snowmobile routes for the last few days, through a wildlife reserve, to the Anishinabe village of Rapid Lake. We number fewer at this point; not even Vollant’s toenail removal operations could keep some walkers on their feet. Those of us who continue struggle after the break. There are long, steep hills to climb, and though some rare bright sunshine allows us to strip down to T-shirts, it also makes the snow soggy and the pulks harder to pull. Ed. Note: Every soloist has a personal Operating System — some are just more intentional than others. They can govern anything from guiding principles to strategic tactics to (seemingly small) routine practices. Some are about competing better or working more productively. Others are about satisfying the kind of hunger that attracts so many to the solo life in the first place: the desire to live in a richer, slower, more engaged, and self-determined way. To find one’s groove.Terpenes are the trees’ own immune system,” says Streets, “and when you walk underneath them you breathe that self-protection mechanism. There are studies showing that the blood pressure of people walking under evergreens was significantly lower than that of the people walking in a control group.” Life is slower on the sidewalk—this is most definitely not “life in the fast lane”—but it’s also far less stressful. You don’t hear of someone complaining about how he was late because of sidewalk construction or a “sidewalk jam.” I may know that walking will be slower than another means of transportation, but if it is a route with which I am familiar, I can know almost to the exact minute how long it will take me, whereas other methods of getting around are subject to many potentially delaying variables.

Since Aristotle and his 3rd-century BC peripatetic school – peripatetic meaning “of walking” or “given to walking about” after the peripatoi (walkways) of Athens’ Lyceum – rambling and rumination have always gone hand in hand. Right now, we feel really good because of the endorphins we’ve generated. This sense of well-being can last for three or four weeks, but then you can fall into a deep depression. It happens to Olympic athletes, to people who climb Mount Everest. It’s normal, not a sign of weakness.”Instead, Strayed belongs to a different and more demotic group of people who walk countless miles outside and alone. These are the religious pilgrims: the Muslim walking to Mecca, the Buddhist to Bodh Gaya, the Hindu to Puri, the Catholic to Lourdes. (Ancient Jews made pilgrimages to the Temple at Jerusalem, but that was destroyed 2,000 years ago. More modern Jews do not traditionally walk, possibly because, traditionally, we flee. This could be a generalizable truth: People in diaspora stay put when they can.) Religious pilgrims walk outdoors, but their fundamental journey is inward, undertaken to improve the state of their soul. So, too, with Strayed. The subtitle of Bill Bryson’s book is Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail. The subtitle of hers is From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail. Terpenes are a type of organic compound produced by plants, part of a protection system against insects, disease and rot. They are the reason pine trees smell piney and citrus trees smell citrussy. They are also one of the reasons humans are drawn to trees. The presence of these tiny molecules has an anti-inflammatory effect on the body. Laboratory research has shown that the terpene a-pinene, found in conifers such as our yew tree, could have properties that prevent cancer. Studies on the citrus compound D-limonene suggest it is an effective mood-booster and antidepressant. Well, there is a LOT we can glean from that. It’s unknown who the gunman is or what organization he is with, but if he’s right, then French medical researchers were responsible for both the start of the zombie apocalypse and for “making it worse.” The fact that the doctor doesn’t dispute any of these claims makes it likely that these teams of French doctors, two of which are named “Primrose” and “Violet”, caused the end of the world. Any doctor who could be found has been jailed for their crimes. While I was writing the book, I found myself thinking of my granny quite often,” she says. “All the things she would say – ‘Go for a walk and take a few deep breaths and then you’ll feel calmer’ – that sort of thing. I thought it was just my granny being whimsical. But it turns out that she was right all along.”

Listen to me,” Vollant then says quietly, peering around the circle, looking everybody in the eyes, the firelight reflecting off his bright yellow parka. “I’m speaking as a physician. Strayed came to this body of work late — after she wrote Wild — and she does not identify with it. “It’s this educated white guy who spends a lot of time roaming around his properties,” she says, “plus usually a pretty intellectual, dry way of writing about the natural world. And we very seldom hear anything about the interior life.”

Before the pandemic, many psychiatrists would have dismissed the possibility of effective psychotherapy occurring through video. Yet, by necessity, the field has adapted and learned to shed the trappings and comforts of carefully decorated offices, couches, and armchairs, and distance from homes, pets, and children. Just as Freud made do with a set of circumstances that prevented him from working in his accustomed way, today’s psychiatrists can take a lesson. The safety and boundaries of the enclosed office, with a therapeutic frame sealed off from the outside world are, paradoxically, no longer safe, so we have turned to virtual settings. My conversation with Vollant continued to resonate. “When you begin a journey, you don’t know why,” he had said sagely. “The trail will show you the way.”

In search of direction, I meandered throughout Ottawa whenever I had downtime, following desire paths across railroad corridors and reedy creeks. I skipped sessions at conferences to roam around unfamiliar cities, and assigned myself travel articles anchored by hikes. Intent on following transects people seldom explore by foot, I walked from my childhood home in Toronto to my parents’ cabin in Muskoka. Every time I walked, everywhere, everything seemed better. What’s more, sitting at my computer, easily distracted from the task at hand, I began tripping over reams of clinical and academic research into the physiological and psychological benefits of walking. Was this a frequency illusion, triggered by my obsession, or a prescription for change?Perhaps this evasiveness is why the walking cure proves such a peculiarly British solace. So many of our most loved writers have been trampers who trudged off misery, from Austen, whose heroines are similarly inclined, to Wordsworth, whom the literary critic Thomas De Quincey estimated walked 180,000 miles in his 80 years (an average of six and a half miles a day starting at the age of five), and whose work is rich in trekking. Which means, among other things, that: “It’s hugely valuable processing time! As part of a lame sort of meditation practice, I now set an ‘intention’ when I head out. Sometimes there’ll be a project at work that we’re trying to figure out, or some personal thing, and I try to focus this hour — this “moving meditation” — on that thing that needs solving. Here I am in the place I’m most comfortable, and I allow my thoughts, my feelings, my brain to sort of deconstruct and then reframe the issue in this completely more mindful way. It’s astonishing, really. And it turns the walk into both an escape and also a focused act.”