hi all . . . has anyone here enjoyed the books of Frank MacEowen, "The Mist-Filled Path", "Spiral of Memory and Belonging" and "Meditations on the Celtic Spirit Wheel" (I'm not sure about that last title, but it's something like that . . .)
Frank is a wonderful, poetic shaman and teacher in the Celtic tradition. If you haven't picked these up, I recommend that you do soon! Walk the hills with this wonderful teacher . . . you will not be sorry ;)

an excerpt from "The Mist-Filled Path":

The Spirt and Practice of Hillwalking

The Celtic people have always been a people of voyages, and hillwalking if a natural outgrowth of this voyaging spirit. It is, in some sense, a way to step into the flow of voyaging and participate in the dynamism of ancestral memory. Hillwalking is a practice and custom rooted in the celebration of movement: the movement of the tides, the movement of the ancestors, and the movement of our own feet across the sacred landscape. Hillwalking is, in effect, a way of assuming our place among the cycles of movement of stars, ocean waves, and rain clouds. Hillwalking, in this light, becomes a sourcing exercise, and experience of recalibrating our spirits to the mystery that is all around us, a meditation of movement.

There are, of course, as many ways to approach hillwalking as there are people. I have been on some hillwalks that were storytelling events. Our hillwalking was like stepping into the "Dindsenchas," the Irish "place stories," where every hill, cave, well, and stream has a name and an ancient genealogy. I often learn a great deal when I am a guest at someone's home and we go hillwalking. Every person has a story, and every person has his or her own way of seeing things that offers me a lesson about his or her love for the land. At other times hillwalking has become a healing event. As we walk my companion reveals a heavy heart, and the spirit of the land herself beckons for a purification of these 'burdensome thoughts," as Kierkegaard has put it.

Sometimes when someone comes to me with a problem, I will get the sense that hillwalking is what is needed. The lack of movement around an issue receives an almost sacrosanct momentum when the troubled person gives voice to his or her trouble while we are hillwalking. Some of the best healing that can occur, I think, takes place out on the land, walking. And sometimes, as will be demonstrated in the last chapter, hillwalking can become a conduit for divination within the natural world.


Anyone up for a Hillwalk?

;-)