Walking with the eternal child within and looking with big eyes

[Gabrielle Dean]

 “None of your knowledge, your reading, your connections will be of any use here: two legs suffice, and big eyes to see with. Walk alone, across mountains or through forests. You are nobody to the hills or the thick boughs heavy with greenery. You are no longer a role, or a status, not even an individual, but a body, a body that feels sharp stones on the paths, the caress of long grass and the freshness of the wind. 

 

When you walk, the world has neither present nor future: nothing but the cycle of mornings and evenings. Always the same thing to do all day: walk. 

 

But the walker who marvels while walking (the blue of the rocks in a July evening light, the silvery green of olive leaves at noon, the violet morning hills) has no past, no plans, no experience. He has within him the eternal child. While walking I am but a simple gaze.” 
Frédéric Gros, A Philosophy of Walking

"You are nobody to the hills”: I remember really getting this when I was in the Scottish highlands - the vast ancient landscape completely indifferent to human beings, and I felt a sense of peace with that. Revisited dramatically in Iceland. But happy to know now that "I had within me the eternal child."