Keep walking, though there’s no place to get to.
Don’t try to see through the distances.
That’s not for human beings. Move within,
but don’t move the way fear makes you move.
Rumi
Translated by Coleman Barks
I rarely notice the ditches and gullies along roadways and pathways. Yet, in the past weeks their presence has seeped back into my awareness. “Back into” because as a child I loved these human-dug indentations in the earth. They offered the thrill of a slippery descent on snowy days in the winter. In the warmer months there was simultaneous joy of seeing the playfulness of bunnies and other small animals paired with attentive alertness for snakes and black widow spiders. Since I was in the Great Plains in the center of North America, where there are long stretches of smooth and uninterrupted landscapes, any ditch allowed my small stature to descend below the horizon and remain as long as I wished.
My younger attraction to these earthly indentations slowly faded during my early schoolyears. This was in part because I discovered that most of my peers had not had the freedom to follow their own paths of curiosity and inspirations and were accustomed to more organized forms of exploration. There was also a glimmering of awareness that for some of the adults around me, ditches symbolized more than the possibility of a poisonous bite that had antidotes: they represented the violent memories of being in the trenches of war as well as the holes in the ground that held their deceased loved ones. So, slowly my late teens, my mind learned to jump over any awareness of gullies and ditches.
It took the wildness of nature to stir my own inner connection with, and appreciation of, these grooves in the earth. In their uncultivated nature, they are strips of wilderness lining trails, railways, roadways and other pathways for ground transportation for humans. In springtime, wildflowers begin to pop up – like the bunnies in my childhood – offering endless moment of delightful surprise and joyous awe. In my current travels in northern Italy, red poppies line these pathways, offering me the feeling of being led along my journeys by this blood-red color.
Blurry streaks of redness stretched along the railways as the train sped from one location to another. Then, the clarity of individual droplets of red came together in the shape of a fluid line of blossoms. Occasionally a petal would release into the wind, gliding like a delicate butterfly until the breeze calmed and it floated quietly to the earth. Long after I’ve passed along these pathways, the pods will burst and the stems will soften and disappear into the soil, having fully lived and completed their work. I, for one, will have been touched by their momentary presence. I will be forever grateful to them for re-enlivening my awareness of a long-overlooked love of ditches and gullies along life’s pathway.
Practice
This practice supports remembrance
Prepare –
- Please consider skimming through this practice to stir your own inspiration for supporting remembrance. Then, remove all electronic devices from the space where you are, including any non-medical devices from your wrists and body.
- Stand barefoot without an extra mat or rug between you and the floor, walkway, or earth.
Practice –
- Gently rock back and forth and then side to side on your feet for a few times. Maybe lift one foot up and then the other, while imagining as you step down, that each foot is saying hello to the earth that supports you as you move about throughout the day. While doing this, perhaps imagine all the feet and paws that have walked on this spot of the earth where you are. Breathe.
- Raise your hands up toward the sky. Imagine you could touch the most distant galaxy. Perhaps reach one hand up a little more and then the other, again as though you are greeting the space and air that holds all earthly existence, and the unknown beyond. Perhaps imagine all forms of life that have and will move through this space, including the stars and the planets, as well as our planetary ancestry and future forms of earthly life. Breathe.
- Stretch your arms to the side and spin around, imagining you are greeting everything and everyone that has supported and supports your embodiment and shapes who you are. Imagine the sources of your learning, food, living environment, relationships, connections, losses and joys. Breathe.
- In any way you feel inspired, offer remembrance, reverence, praise, or thanks, for the mysterious cycles of arising and releasing.
- Perhaps give yourself a hug. Then, come to a seated position.
Transition back into your day –
- Sit quietly for a few moments.
- When you are ready, return to your day.
This poem appears in Mala of the Heart: 108 Sacred Poems, page 2, edited by Ravi Nathwani and Kate Vogt and published by New World Library. Photo by Nick Fewings. H E A R T H is posted each new and full moon. KateVogt©2026.
