Peace in motion
The Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh wrote that most of us walk as if we are running, "printing anxiety and sorrow on the Earth." To walk mindfully, he says, is to leave another trace entirely: peace, solidity, care. Walking meditation is not symbolic. Each step is the practice itself - a way of training attention, ethics, and presence together, in ordinary time.
In the past weeks, as protesters were killed in Iran, ICE raids were carried out across the United States, and political upheaval rocked Latin America, a group of Buddhist monks began walking. In trainers and barefoot, accompanied by their rescue dog, they moved slowly through the Southern states of America, chanting, offering flowers, and gathering people in public spaces for moments of stillness.
The monks' procession offers no grand solution to the violence that fills the news. Instead, it insists on something quieter and more demanding: staying human, staying compassionate, staying present.
Sleeping in tents, stopping in churchyards and town squares, handing flowers to strangers, they enact what Buddhism calls right action - not an abstract belief, not withdrawal, but an act of moving through the world that refuses to reproduce its brutality.
In this sense, their walk is a ritual of dignity. As Thich Nhat Hanh remarked, the true miracle is not to walk on water, but to walk on the Earth. Step by step, the monks offer a form of resistance without slogans, a fragile, stubborn hope that how we move through the world still matters.
And to encourage greater access and movement for all, we're hosting a conversation with Rowena Macaulay, Tom Marsh, and Amble Skuse - three practitioners reimagining what it means for everybody to get out and about.
Whatever you do this week, step outside. Pay attention. Walk.
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Writer, walker, digital storyteller, psychogeographer
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Echoes
ECHOES specialises in geolocative audio. Our free platform allows creators to make and publish incredible GPS-triggered walking experiences. We also create apps which focus on sound and location, like The Royal Parks and The Royal Academy’s collaborative ‘Music for Trees’ app.
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Free for supporting members, open to everyone
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2026-01-20 19:00 UTC
· Online
Too easy to make the assumption that everyone can walk – surely it is the most human thing we humans can do? However, not everyone has the privilege of the sensorial able-bodied. Often overlooked in event planning or in creative compositions, yet frequently made to feel as if in the spotlight, an unintended public perf... Keep reading
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Upcoming events
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2026-01-20 19:00 UTC
· Online
Too easy to make the assumption that everyone can walk – surely it is the most human thing we humans can do? However, not everyone has the privilege of the sensoria... Keep reading
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2026-01-25 15:00 UTC
· Online
Annemarie Lopez, walking writer, curator, and digital storyteller, presents the work of walk · listen · create, an international platform exploring walking as a cre... Keep reading
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2026-01-28 18:30 UTC
· Online
An online gathering to celebrate The Feminist Art of Walking, includes contributions from special guests featured in the book of the same title by Morag Rose. Speci... Keep reading
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2026-02-02 17:00 UTC
· Online
During a thirty-minute experimental *Laboratorio*, artists will experiment with a live performance using rudimentary audiovisual tools and raw materials, far from t... Keep reading
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2026-02-03 16:00 UTC
· Online
Walking Arts and Relational Geographies evolves this year into The Walking Assembly. The name itself reflects a shift toward a more horizontal form of gathering, wh... Keep reading
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2026-02-04 18:30 UTC
· Hatchards - Piccadilly, Piccadilly, London, UK
Join Quintin Lake for an illustrated discussion of his solo pilgrimage around the coast of Britain. We are delighted to welcome Quintin Lake here to Hatchards this ... Keep reading
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2026-02-10 19:00 UTC
· Online
Morag Rose, author of the widely acclaimed The Feminist Art of Walking will be joined in conversation with author and poet Polly Atkin for our first Walking Writer... Keep reading
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WALC
Walking Arts & Local Communities (WALC) is an artistic cooperation project, co-funded by the European Union, Creative Europe, starting in January 2024 for four years. With seven partners from five countries, WALC establishes an International Center for Artistic Research and Practice of Walking Arts, in Prespa, Greece, at the border with Albania and North Macedonia, backed up by an online counterpart in the format of a digital platform for walking arts.
Featured Writing
This week we have chosen Nomad Possessions by Ricky Abbott which was shortlisted in the 2023 competition on the theme of Walking A/way.
Nomad Possessions
The first gardens must have been long,
broadcast from discarded seeds along circle treks.
So, maybe ha-ha is the oldest garden name.
When you doubled back and saw the corn had followed you,
at a discreet distance, “A ha!”, you said.
If you walk the long garden, you haul everything you own.
You carry on your shoulders what doesn’t grow shoulders,
so better to herd than hoard.
Better to store with quick assonance, to vault with oral verve
and keep head counts in campfire stories,
rather than enrol in scroll and scroll of earthly troves
your battered treasured things:
the trust of cattle
that follow or maybe lead
not knowing boundaries
only following beaten tracks
choreographed as water thrives
the pattern of a carpet
that exists foremost in potential
a child could carry
your computers in the stars
making you look up not down
at properties too large to license
languages long lost and gained
different songs with different steps
along highways without signs.
Where towers are casting shadows in the circling sun,
as rings of repugnance round fearful hoards,
you are strangers outside the walls,
but you can always carry strangers
(Rohingya mother, grandma Cantonese)
whom you may never know
and grow where you were never planted.
We can forage strangers broadcast in ourselves
(we anger our old gods after all,
who abide in the stories of corn,
when we are not kind to strangers).
The last gardens on Earth will be long.
Want to read other long and short listed pieces under this theme? – use this link
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Stuf we found
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