June 13, 2013

Spain: Initial Reflections

I felt like I could have writ­ten this piece after only one week of walk­ing on The Way of St. James. That's how quickly the spir­i­tual stim­uli started pil­ing on in my neu­ro­trans­mit­ters. I thought I was pre­pared for the myr­iad of cliches sur­round­ing this net­work of pil­grims' routes in Spain. I was pre­pared for [...]

February 15, 2013

The Healing Power of Walking

"Solvi­tur ambu­lando: It is solved by walk­ing."- Augus­tine I had a rough evening a few nights ago. From 8 at night until 2 in the morn­ing, my blood glu­cose was in the high 400s and low 500s-dangerously high. I had eaten very nor­mally all day, so this was not caused by ingest­ing too many carbs. [...]

February 12, 2013

Seeking New Geographies

Bicy­cling through the hills from Top­ton to Dryville one Tues­day morn­ing in August of 2012, I came to a fork in the road. To the right was Carl's Hill, a short, very steep climb with a hard 90-degree turn near the top. To the left was Smoke­town Hill, which was a more grad­ual climb but [...]

January 5, 2013

Archetypes Defined: The Final Four

Don't know what an arche­type is? Check out this post for a primer, and read this post for a dis­cus­sion of arche­types #1-3. Arche­type #4: Explo­ration and Dis­cov­ery From Pierre Teil­hard de Chardin: "The fact is that cre­ation has never stopped. The cre­ative act is one huge con­tin­ual ges­ture, drawn out over the total­ity of time. [...]

November 14, 2012

Archetypes Defined: The First Three

Don't know what an arche­type is? Check out my last post. Arche­type #1: The Quest I always felt that the Walk Across Amer­ica was a quest, akin to the search for the holy grail or the odyssey of Ulysses. I was on a quest to con­front the dragon of diabetes-not to slay it, nec­es­sar­ily, but merely [...]

September 28, 2012

Calling Forth the Inspirations of Mythological Archetypes

Don't let the heav­i­ness of that title fool you. It's actu­ally quite sim­ple. In 1997, as I was walk­ing across Amer­ica, I devel­oped a set of themes, motifs or tropes that helped get me through some tough times. They were espe­cially help­ful in refram­ing my per­spec­tive dur­ing times of rough weather, gen­eral malaise, phys­i­cal sickness [...]

August 21, 2012

The Aging of Body and Machine

I took my old motorhome out of win­ter stor­age a month ago. It has served me well since 2001, when I pur­chased it for An Adven­ture on the Rim of Amer­ica. It's a 1993 Chevy, small, only 21 feet in length, but per­fect for haul­ing AV equip­ment, bicy­cles, spare bike parts and tires. We slept [...]

July 21, 2012

A Holistic Approach to Diabetes Management

I am a long­time believer in the con­cept of a holis­tic approach to health - a com­bi­na­tion, in near equal parts, of mind, body and spirit. I aim for longevity but live in the joy of the moment, even if those moments are phys­i­cally dif­fi­cult. There have been many dif­fi­cult times in my life. Some [...]