A man watching television one night was struck by a scene in which a father, unable to change what was happening to his daughter, went out into the wilderness as a form of prayer. The moment resonated deeply, not because it was unfamiliar, but because he had been doing something similar his entire life without having a name for it.
The first time was in his twenties, shortly after meeting the woman he would marry. She lived about seven or eight miles away, off the Sawgrass Expressway. He could have driven, but something in him needed to travel on foot. He walked up University Drive, past strip malls and traffic lights, and onto the side of the highway. By the time he reached her door, his legs were tired and his shirt was soaked, but he was happy. He had pushed himself to endure on the way there, feeling she deserved that effort. He had learned along the way that tenderness often needs to move through the body before it can reach another person.
His parents live about five miles away, and he has walked that distance more times than he can count. Walking step after step past the corners and yards where he grew up changes his state of being. By the time he arrives, he feels fully present and appreciative of the gift of seeing them. Sometimes the person he is moving toward is his son, who has worn the number five in sports since he was very young. When the man learned that Hall of Fame third baseman Brooks Robinson, admired for both his talent and kindness, had also worn that number, he walked several miles to a baseball card store and back. He wanted his son to know his number had been worn by someone worth looking up to, and it felt right to make a journey of it.
Another time, carrying more stress from work than he knew how to handle, he hiked fourteen miles to the beach. He did not tell anyone. He just kept going until the street ended, the ocean appeared in front of him, and the tension had fallen off his shoulders. These long walks have always been a way of transferring something from the inside to the outside, a way of saying with his whole body that a challenge, person, or moment matters enough to be honored.
A few years ago, his daughter was going through a hard time. He and his wife tried everything they could think of to support her, but he was left sitting with the helpless feeling every parent knows, the one where you would trade places with your child if you could. Sometimes all you can do is love someone from a distance and hope it reaches them. He had done everything else he could think of and came up empty. So he laced up his sneakers and headed west.
He moved past bus stops and plazas, past vacant lots where the city starts to thin out, past the point where the sidewalks end and the land becomes something wilder. It was cold for South Florida, probably in the low forties, but he kept going. He went until the last gas station was behind him and there was nothing ahead but open space. He stopped at the fence that marks the beginning of the Everglades. The sawgrass stretched to the horizon, and the sky was endless. Nothing out there knew his name or cared what he was worried about. His feet ached, his lungs had worked hard, and he had exhausted himself to get there.
Standing at the edge of that wilderness, he let himself want her to be okay in the most raw, undefended way he could manage. He stood there a long time, then turned around and made his way home. When he got back, the temperature had dropped into the thirties. He went to the backyard and got in the pool, and the cold hit him like a wall. He stayed in that water and thought about her the whole time. It was a small act and maybe a foolish one, but it felt like the truest thing he could do.
He does not know if any of it helped her, though she is doing better now. He will not pretend the road or the cold water had anything to do with that. But he thinks he understands now what he has been doing out there all these years. When love gets deep enough, it builds up inside you, and it needs to move. Some people talk to friends, some write, and some hold on tight until things get better. He pours himself out in the direction of the ones he loves until he is spent.
He has learned that no matter how much people want to, they cannot always change things for those they hold dear. Something about accepting that takes time and distance. Walking is how he works through what he cannot resolve so he can be more fully available and grounded for the ones he cares about. The scene on television that night touched him so deeply because he had been doing what that man did long before he saw it on the screen. Neither of them had a better option, and neither of them needed one. The man on the screen went out into the wilderness for his daughter, and he walked to the edge of the Everglades for his.
People do not always have the answers, but they have the love, and they find ways to keep expressing it anyway. He thinks that might be the most human thing there is.
