“If anyone asks where you are going,” wrote Graham, “you may tell him in confidence, whisper the dreadful fact in his ear—‘Honestly, I do not know.’” Graham was talking about his zigzag walks. “This is distinctly not a walk on which to embark with one’s wife,” he added.

Why? Why no wife? Maybe it’s because the walker as artist must journey with total abandonment (no competing loyalties for the project at hand). He or she gives up control and, therefore, cannot take responsibility for others who may be affected by the choices (or non-choices) he makes.

This was the thought Henry David Thoreau must have entertained when, sounding very biblical, he wrote the following: “If you are ready to leave father and mother, and brother and sister, and wife and child and friends, and never see them again—if you have paid your debts, and made your will, and settled all your affairs, and are a free man—then you are ready for a walk.”

What’s he saying? Is walking only for eunuchs and hermits? I don’t think so. I imagine he is telling us that real artists go all in with their art. It can’t be a part-time nor half-hearted passion. It will require effort, pain and sacrifice

A bestselling author I know would tell her students they needed three things to be successful: talent, luck and hard work. “And,” she added. “If you do the third, you won’t need as much of the first two.”

That said (successful walking requires some discomfort). Why would anyone do it?

My next blog.