Walking on Thursday
By Greg Fallis
On Thursdays we walk. As the earth ticks its way around the sun we take camera in hand and leave our warm homes, our busy offices, our stuffy classrooms and we walk. We walk and we take photographs of what we see.
Down at the bone, it’s a tribal thing. We are a different sort of tribe, to be sure, bounded not by geography or kinship or religion, but by our shared interests and peculiar practices. Even so, the Thursday Walk is a ritual that only makes sense when viewed through a tribal lens…and only makes limited sense then. It is, by almost any measure, an odd thing to do.
Yet we’ve done it for two years. We don’t intend to stop.
Photo By Pam UllmanThe Utata walking ritual isn’t unique. Tribes and cultures in various parts of the globe have been engaged in their own walking traditions for centuries. The Irish, for example, have been trekking up the stony side of Cruach Phádraig in their bare feet for at least 1500 years. Japanese pilgrims have been following the footsteps of Kobo Daishi for a dozen centuries, hiking a 1,400-kilometer route around the island of Shikoku.
Our own minor perambulatory practice may pale in comparison, it may seem frivolous and trivial…and perhaps it is. The fact is, we walk on Thursdays for no other reason than we decided we should walk on Thursdays. We walk because one of our members, with no logical or rational purpose, announced “I'm going for a walk tomorrow. I really am and no one can stop me…. Anyone care to join me?”
There was no benefit in joining her. No real point. It was, in fact, a damned silly thing to do. But we did it anyway. That may be why we did it. That may be why we’ve continued to do it every Thursday for the last one hundred and four weeks. We are not afraid to be silly.
Photo By Karen JamesNot all of us walk, of course. Those who do, don’t walk every week. But every week some of us walk. Those who don’t walk, look at the photographs of those who do. In that way, we’re all walking together. In that way, we’re all walking toward each other.
In a strange way, this loopy tradition maintains the tribe. Physically, we may be walking alone, with loved ones and friends, with our dogs, but in spirit we’re walking together and we’re walking toward each other. Logically, that makes no sense. Happily, logic has nothing to do with the Thursday Walk.
Photo By Lori Hale WilliamsAfter two years, we’ve walked enough miles that we probably could have actually reached each other. But it’s not the reaching that’s important; it’s the walking and the taking of photographs. It’s the sharing of photographs. It’s the sharing of the experience.
We’re entering our third year of walking on Thursdays. It makes no more sense now than it did that first Thursday. It never will make much sense. But that’s okay. We like it that way.
