When the Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) used the phrase “wander in gladness” in This Lime-Tree Bower my Prison, he expressed the feeling of being intimately connected to the swirling, interlocking patterns of the natural environment, he was walking in Pattern; The shapes of the tree branches, clouds, water. Pattern, pattern everywhere (as ‘water, water everywhere’ in his Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner).

The gladness of knowing the eternal, undying pattern inside which one’s own small personal pattern exists, lives, dies, merges into other patterns that go on everlastingly. A not uncommon feeling; to be experienced by anyone, in most natural environments. It is helped by consciously sensing the naturally formed patterns of nature enveloping the body as one walks. Not too much thinking about, or analysing pattern, but walking it. A poetic process, launched by seeing pattern as a kind of entity inside which one is a small, momentarily-coincided part. The patterns forming, creating, dying in one’s own body are linked to those in the sky, lake, air. For there is a communication between patterns – spontaneously.

When walking, dancing, swimming, the body comes closest to touching these patterns, feeling them slide between fingers, arms, legs, lips. Connecting the body to this huge living pattern-making process. Dancing to the patterns of music is another excellent method.

This walk is simply about opening the channel, noticing, letting nature speak back – and hearing it.

A 3 hour walk.

Numbers: no limit, but intimate enough to be able to hear the speaker without microphone.
Words: a few lines of poetry/thoughts dropped in every hour. (only as prompts/suggestions, not
intending to interfere with the walker’s personal journey)
Introduction: The tone of the walk will be set by a 10 minute introductory talk. Extracted from forthcoming
book PATTERN – and the Ship of the Self.
Form: participants are invited to record their experiences through photography, words, images. But only if they wish.

At the end we can exchange experiences.