{"id":1135,"date":"2015-04-02T20:00:19","date_gmt":"2015-04-03T03:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.soulgrowthradio.com\/?p=1135"},"modified":"2015-07-20T17:27:20","modified_gmt":"2015-07-21T00:27:20","slug":"she-walks-the-earth-the-line-curved","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.soulgrowthradio.com\/she-walks-the-earth-the-line-curved\/","title":{"rendered":"She Walks the Earth: The Line Curved"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Tin<\/center><\/p>\n

The Line and the Labyrinth<\/h3>\n

I sipped and siphoned every last drop of her noodle soup, devouring it like a starving child.<\/strong> She patted the dirt floor inviting me to rest. I put one of my packs down as a pillow but where my head landed was her awaiting lap.<\/p>\n

She had seen me pushing my cart up the Hai Van Mountain pass, a sixteen hundred foot incline. As I approached the crest, she stood in the street in her classic Vietnamese bamboo hat and encouraged me with vocal cheering, applause and eventually grabbing my cart and walking a few feet till she parked it in front of her tin shack.<\/p>\n

We didn\u2019t speak a word of each other\u2019s language. I still said thank you as she nodded in understanding and began to run her fingers through my hair. She massaged my temples, my forehead and ears. The tears running from my cheeks quelled me into a sleep for fourteen hours.<\/p>\n

That night, sleeping in a tin shack looking out over another planet made of moss, mist and oceans, it would seem like I was a character in “The NeverEnding Story,” that it was all magical and perfect. And it was. Even though it was the night I contracted dengue<\/span>.<\/p>\n

After a week of walking sandwiched between rice fields and motorbikes, the landscape flattened and I entered the thick traffic and commotion of Hue. Before the fever set in, I was lucky enough to have reached a Nha Nghi (a cheap Guesthouse). I wrapped myself in my sleeping bag and spent four days unable to move.<\/p>\n

Now, besides the fact that the headache associated with dengue feels like your brain is playing a drunken game of Twister, there\u2019s little room for thought and even less for feelings–unless of course, it\u2019s the physical push of your bones attempting to excavate themselves from their fleshy restraints.<\/p>\n

Loneliness cuddled me through the first night.<\/strong> But what happened in that dark room<\/span> was something unexpected for me. Rather than trying to crab-crawl out of my skin to avoid the sensations, I willingly stayed with the pain while I followed my thoughts into deeper crevices of my mind. And what kept coloring my attention was my route.<\/p>\n

When I was planning my route it was all about efficiency. The criterion was that it had to be direct and quick passages through the landscapes, Visa-friendly countries and if possible, routes that other walkers, runners or cyclists had used before. Because I had little experience myself, my motto was if they could do it, I could do it. Plus, there was a lot more information available on routes from people who had \u201cbeen there, done that.\u201d<\/p>\n

It all mapped out to be a straight line around a spherical shape. My global trail was planned months before I took my first step.<\/p>\n

Vietnam is the one of the most beautiful places I\u2019ve ever visited and in a country that was devastated by American forces during the war, they welcome us with open hearts and arms. The presence here is one of forgiveness and curiosity. It is alive with welcoming tomorrow unconditionally and letting go of yesterday. It is a remarkable and inviting mysterious place but one that I no longer wish to walk across.<\/p>\n

\"Beach<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Puzzling the Curve<\/h3>\n

I am committed. And I am stubborn.<\/strong> While my brain continued with Twister, right hand on green, a voice echoed through the down of my sleeping bag, what\u2019s the difference between the two?<\/p>\n

And then a conversational memory, one with a close friend who shared many encouraging cups of coffee with me in the beginning stages of planning my walk, \u201cSo, is your map based on all the places you\u2019ve always wanted to visit?\u201d her eyes wide with excitement.<\/p>\n

My reply was calculated because I had been asked this many times before. \u201cNo, it\u2019s not a holiday. If I were to only go where I want to go, I\u2019d be zigzagging all over the planet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her deep brown eyes just stared at me. She knew I wasn\u2019t interested in setting or breaking any record, but my parameters were identical to someone who was.<\/p>\n

She coolly smiled,\u201cZigzagging. Sounds like fun to me.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It\u2019s important to have a plan.<\/strong> One doesn\u2019t go walking in a thick forest without a map or trail to follow, unless they\u2019re making a Youtube tutorial on wilderness survival skills and navigating using the stars, which I have watched, and none have given me the courage to try it.<\/p>\n

If heat and sickness could cause me to waver in my commitment to this walk, I would have surrendered in the Australian Outback. But what I was discovering is that my heart wasn\u2019t in Southeast Asia.<\/p>\n

My proposed route was going to take me through the most populated areas of the planet. But I yearned for the Steppes of Mongolia<\/span> and the Eagle-dense forest of the Altai Mountains. I was craving more nature and solitude.<\/p>\n

The dengue wasn\u2019t a problem, just an irritating setback and a catalyst for me to find my own inner compass.<\/p>\n

Wasn\u2019t the entire basis of my walk to follow my heart? To listen to where I\u2019m being guided? \u201cShe walks the earth,\u201d I had thought. She was Me.<\/p>\n

The difference between commitment and stubbornness is that commitment has the ability to compromise<\/span>. If commitment is the chariot, She, the soul of my heart, is the charioteer.<\/p>\n

To think I know what it will look or feel like to get from point A to point B is a false sense of control. I had a plan. I had a straight line. And then it emancipated itself from my grip. The magic of the ineffable, delivered through the sword of a tiny insect, was a train derailing itself through my route.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EPILOGUE:<\/strong> I have since recovered from dengue and burned all my maps. I have left Southeast Asia for Northern Asia. I am now walking across Mongolia. It turned out not to be such a big hassle. I only had to buy a pair of snow boots.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In the know<\/h3>\n

Mongolian Steppes:<\/strong> It is interesting that they call it a steppe when referring to flat plains.<\/p>\n

The Altai:\u00a0<\/strong> The mountains that sit between the western corner of Mongolia and Kazakhstan in Russia. They are Russian territory and I will walk between the border points of Kaz and Mongolia through the Altai. I hear they have nomadic Eagle trainers that live there. Otherwise, it\u2019s a desolate and beautiful mountain-scape.<\/p>\n

Dengue<\/strong>: A painful and debilitating illness transmitted by infected mosquitoes. Symptoms can feel like a VERY aggressive flu.<\/p>\n

*all photo credits: Angela Maxwell<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Line and the Labyrinth I sipped and siphoned every last drop of her noodle soup, devouring it like a starving child. She patted the dirt floor inviting me to rest. I put one of my packs down as a pillow but where my head landed was her awaiting lap. She had seen me pushing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":1138,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[51,90,67],"tags":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.soulgrowthradio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Lead-pic-tinshack-WEB.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.soulgrowthradio.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1135"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.soulgrowthradio.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.soulgrowthradio.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.soulgrowthradio.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.soulgrowthradio.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1135"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.soulgrowthradio.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1135\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1396,"href":"https:\/\/www.soulgrowthradio.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1135\/revisions\/1396"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.soulgrowthradio.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.soulgrowthradio.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.soulgrowthradio.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.soulgrowthradio.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}