LongWalking: Nurturing Independent Thinking and Transformative Journeys

LongWalking is more than a stroll or a fitness regimen—it is a call to deep engagement, both physical and intellectual, a quiet resistance to the pace and practices of modern life. In its simplest form, it is the practice of walking long distances in nature. But in a more profound sense, LongWalking invites one to return to a mode of being that our ancestors knew well—an embodied wisdom that is largely forgotten in our hurried, hyper-mediated world. It echoes ancient rites of passage, like the Aboriginal “Walkabout” or the Native American Vision Quest—journeys undertaken not to reach a destination but to transform the self.

These traditional rites were embedded in cultural systems that recognized the need for thresholds—moments when a young person was called to leave the known world, venture alone into uncertainty, and return with a deeper understanding of their place in the cosmos. They were spiritual, social, and ecological experiences. Today, we are left with hollowed-out versions of these rituals, or none at all. Adolescence, once a sacred time of initiation, is now managed by schools and screens. The modern world offers few authentic paths into adulthood, few quiet spaces in which to ask fundamental questions: Who am I? What am I for? Where do I belong?

Instead, we usher our young people through a labyrinth of industrial education, standardized testing, and credentialing. The soul’s journey is replaced by resume-building. The body is confined to desks. Nature is relegated to weekend escapes or science class diagrams. The result is widespread alienation—from ourselves, from each other, from the earth.

Albert Einstein once quipped, “School is the only thing that interferes with my education.” Behind the humor lies a critique that is as relevant today as it was in his time. Schooling, for all its good intentions, often functions more as a mechanism of socialization than of liberation. Its structures—fixed schedules, age segregation, behavioral controls, and curriculum standardization—are designed more to produce conformity than to cultivate creativity or critical thought.

Einstein’s brilliance emerged not because of school, but despite it. His most profound breakthroughs came from solitary walks and thought experiments, as he followed his curiosity wherever it led. He was, in many ways, a LongWalker (LongThinker)—a thinker who understood that learning happens best when the body is in motion and the mind is free.

So too did Socrates believe that education was not the transference of knowledge from teacher to pupil, but the awakening of knowledge already within. He walked the streets of Athens engaging citizens in dialogue, not to fill their heads with facts, but to unsettle them—to lead them to question, to reflect, and ultimately, to know themselves. The Latin root of the word education—educare—means “to draw out,” not “to put in.” A true teacher, then, is like a tracker, noticing the faint signs of inner potential and guiding the learner toward their inner trail.

This ethos of drawing out is vividly embodied in the 2000 documentary The Great Dance: A Hunter’s Story, which I often share with students when introducing them to the concept of tracking. The film follows three Bushmen hunters—Karroha, Xlhoase, and !Ngate—as they move through the Kalahari Desert, tracking antelope with a quiet mastery that borders on the miraculous. They speak of tracking as more than a survival skill—it is a way of seeing, a way of being. Every broken twig and subtle indentation is a clue, a part of a story that the land is telling.

But in a moment of quiet sorrow,!Ngate voices a fear: that this ancient knowledge may not survive modern schooling. “The children are sitting in school,” he says, “sitting, sitting, sitting—it’s like waiting to die.” The phrase is jarring. But it is not melodramatic. It names something profoundly true: the loss of vitality, the disconnection from land and lineage, the soul-deep boredom that results when learning is abstracted from life.

Sitting, for the Bushmen, is not neutral. It is symbolic of stagnation, of spiritual death. The human being is meant to move, to engage, to observe. LongWalking, in this light, is not just good for the body—it is essential to the soul. It is how one learns to see again, to listen, to think.

Modern education, by contrast, too often removes the student from the world. It is obsessed with controlling time, outcomes, and information. Learning is compartmentalized, siloed into subjects, and judged by grades. There is little space for mystery, for self-directed exploration, for wandering. Yet it is precisely in the wandering that real learning often takes place.

Henry David Thoreau understood this deeply. In his celebrated essay “Walking,” he insists that walking is not a pastime but a “crusade,” a spiritual undertaking that reconnects us with the wildness necessary for both physical and moral health. “I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits,” he wrote, “unless I spend four hours a day at least—and it is commonly more than that—sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields.” For Thoreau, walking was a form of thinking. Nature was not a backdrop but a co-teacher. The rustling leaves, the pattern of clouds, the track in the mud—all pointed toward more profound truths.

Contemporary society, however, offers few such opportunities. Our children grow up indoors, their eyes fixed to screens. Their experiences are mediated through devices, their imaginations colonized by algorithms. The dominant educational system prepares them not for wisdom but for work, for participation in an economic system that itself is out of balance with the natural world. The rise in adolescent anxiety, depression, and alienation is not mysterious—it is symptomatic of this disconnection.

In many indigenous cultures, the capacity to think for oneself was not a luxury—it was a necessity. Life depended on it. Learning emerged from close observation, storytelling, trial and error, and listening to elders and the land. It was adaptive, relational, and holistic. The goal was not to pass tests but to become a person of substance, integrity, and usefulness to the community.

What would it mean to return to such a model of learning, not in some romanticized or appropriative sense, but in a spirit of humility and integration? What if we treated LongWalking not as an extracurricular activity, but as a central component of education?

To walk long distances—especially alone—is to cultivate patience, resilience, and presence. It is to submit oneself to the rhythms of nature, to experience discomfort and delight, to confront the self without distraction. In walking, the mind loosens its grip on habitual thought patterns. New insights emerge unbidden. As the poet Wendell Berry put it, “The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.”

In walking, one meets the impediments. Blisters. Doubt. Weather. Fatigue. And in meeting them, one discovers unexpected strength. Walking becomes a rite of passage—not institutionalized or prescribed, but personal and profound.

In a culture addicted to speed and novelty, the slow, repetitive act of walking is a radical act. It reclaims time. It honors slowness. It teaches that meaning is found not in arrival but in attention.

And crucially, LongWalking is not just about individual growth. It can also serve as a cultural intervention. In a society marked by polarization, consumerism, and ecological crisis, the practice of walking attentively through a landscape fosters humility and reverence. It reconnects us to the web of life. It reawakens what Thomas Berry called the “Great Work”—the task of transitioning from a destructive industrial civilization to a life-sustaining planetary culture.

Einstein warned us that “we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” The crises of our time—climate change, social fragmentation, mental health epidemics—will not be solved by more tests, more screens, or more efficient schooling. They require a different kind of intelligence—slow, embodied, relational, creative. They need a re-education of the senses, a re-rooting of the soul.

LongWalking offers a pathway. It is deceptively simple, profoundly accessible, and deeply transformative. It costs little, requires no permission, and yields insights that no textbook can provide.

In many ways, the growing interest in pilgrimage, wilderness therapy, gap year hiking, and solo retreats reflects a collective longing for silence, for space, for renewal. But we must ensure that these practices do not become mere consumer choices, experiences to be bought and shared on social media. Their power lies in their sincerity, in the willingness to be changed.

If we want to nurture independent thinkers—people capable of navigating the uncertainties of the 21st century—we must create the conditions that allow such thinking to take root. We must loosen our grip on control. We must honor solitude. We must trust the process.

LongWalking is one such condition. It offers a modern-day rite of passage that is grounded, accessible, and profound. It asks little and gives much. In the words of Gary Snyder, “Walking is the great adventure, the first meditation, a practice of heartiness and soul.”

Let us walk, then—not to escape the world, but to meet it. Not to flee education, but to reclaim it. Not to resist culture, but to renew it.