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A Walk in the Woods and the Spiritual Pilgrimage

A Walk in the Woods and the Spiritual Pilgrimage

Last updated on: September 4, 2015 at 7:18 pm by Paul Asay

A Walk in the Woods and the Spiritual Pilgrimage 2015-09-04T19:18:40-06:00 Paul Asay

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From A Walk in the Woods

A Walk in the Woods is about two oldsters (played by the suitably-but-gracefully aged Robert Redford and Nick Nolte) who decide to take a 2,000-mile, 14-state trek along the Appalachian Trail. Why, you ask? Was a tour bus unavailable? Do they have a fear of motorized transportation? No. Bill Bryson, it seems in the movie, was struck with the inexplicable desire to … walk.

The urge came to Bill (Redford) after a series of rather explicable events. He participated in an awkward on-air interview. He attended the funeral of a friend. He looked at himself in the mirror and realized he wasn’t getting any younger. He was struck with a strong desire to do something—to get in touch with nature, have an adventure, maybe rediscover a part of himself that was lost long ago.

For Bill’s friend, Stephen Katz (Nolte), the decision to come along was even more straightforward. He really didn’t have anything better to do, so why not spend that time connecting with an old friend? (Plus, he might just shake those pesky arrest warrants that are hounding him.)

And so the two embark on a trip neither of them is particularly prepared for. They sleep in the forest. They’re visited by bears. They dig holes for their own poop. And (spoiler warning) even though they don’t make it all the way to Maine, they still get to somewhere special, at least mentally and emotionally. Their trip was more of mind and spirit than body.

A Walk in the Woods is not so much a hiking trip as a quasi-spiritual pilgrimage—a journey on, in, to and for the soul.

I believe there’s something innately spiritual about walking. When I want to think, I walk. When I want to stop thinking, I walk. There’s something about the walk—the bend of the ankles, the pendulum-like movement of legs and arms, the sensation of easy, unhurried motion—that centers me. Oddly enough, the longer I walk, the better I feel. Not physically, necessarily; I’ve been on hikes where my lungs felt on the verge of rebellion and my knees, had they vocal chords, would’ve insisted I stop. But sometimes the harder you push your body, the quieter your mind becomes. And when you do stop and take in the sights—a view from a mountain peak, a meadow coated with wildflowers, a buck hiding behind a nearby tree—it can feel as if God has scooped you up in His hands.

From A Walk in the Woods

I think God likes us to be in motion. Scads of studies show that walking and other forms of exercise can reduce stress, sharpen the memory and even can trigger the creation of new brain cells. We’re built to walk: For millennia, that’s how most of us got around. Read the Bible, and you’ll read about tons of people walking everywhere—out of Ur, out of Egypt, into the desert, into the Promised Land—and many found themselves closer to God on their journeys. Jesus walked by the sea and on it, into the wilderness and up Golgotha. The Bible often compares our spiritual journey to a walk.

To undertake a journey in the Bible was about more than reaching a point on the map. It was, often, inherently spiritual. And throughout history, that sense of spirit continues to hold us, even if we’re not particularly religious. When we decide to take a long walk—a massive hike, a backpacking trip, a trek along a cross-country trail—we’re not just hoping to see some pretty sights and eat some gorp: We want to lose ourselves and find us again. We want to touch the hem of the transcendent. We want, in a way, to feel closer to God.

Perhaps that’s why the concept of pilgrimage has been such a huge part of Christianity for so many hundreds of years. In the Middle Ages, the faithful would travel huge distances to visit holy sites: Jerusalem. Rome. Canterbury. Lourdes. The destination was important, sure, but I believe that the journey itself was just as important. It was a time that pilgrims could spend thinking about spiritual matters (while taking care of earthly needs). The process and even sacrifices made for and during the trip was integral to the pilgrimage experience, I’d imagine.

Americans, lacking a bevy of holy relics or ancient sacred cities, have not had the sort of pilgrimage tradition that was found in Europe. But we do have lots of room to roam (and a certain passion to do some serious roaming). And as such, it’s perhaps not too surprising that we often bring some spiritual baggage along with us on our own long walks. At least in our movies. In fact, it’s hard to think of a film centered around a walk that doesn’t feel spiritual.

The Way, directed by Emilio Estevez, might be the best example, featuring as it does an actual pilgrimage. After Estevez’s character dies walking the El Camino de Santiago, a trek through the Pyrenees mountains to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Spain, his father (played by real-life dad Martin Sheen) decides to do El Camino himself, carrying his son’s cremated remains.

Last year’s Wild, starring Reese Witherspoon, features another long walk toward not so much a physical destination (though that’s in the cards, too) as personal salvation. And Witherspoon’s character, Cheryl, lost as she is in a haze of drugs and sex before the walk, could use some saving.

Not all spiritual walks involve a humongous trek of hundreds or thousands of miles. The road between Selma and Montgomery is just 54 miles long. The most critical part of that walk during the Selma Marches—across the Edmund Pettus Bridge and into Dallas County, Ala.—is significantly shorter than that. But in the course of that walk, much of the nation had its soul tested, as we saw in last year’s Selma.

Something as simple as a walk can be a deeply spiritual activity. It was for Bill Bryson and Stephen Katz, even though they never mentioned God once. They were on a journey of reflection and, in some ways, redemption. And maybe they came back a little changed. That’s what pilgrimages are all about, really—even if you don’t make it to the end of the road.

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