I’ve always taken the idea of walking as being on the path, literally, spiritually and figuratively. Like many of the people reading this, I have often walked to steady or ground or calm myself.

Walking has always been a love of mine, something that always took me out of myself when I was in turmoil and feeling alone; I walked; it was just one of the things I did. I also walked when I needed to think about my books, or something on the blog, or before I took a photo.

When I had my open heart surgery five years ago, things changed. I walked obsessively for months to heal, but as I began taking different medications, walking became problematic. The sun caused some reactions to the new medication, so did the humidity.

Diabetes and heart disease are cousins in a way, they are both circulation diseases, and the hot and humid summers we have now are not suitable for people with circulation diseases. The very hot days can be dangerous.

I can walk in the winter, and the Spring, and the Fall, but not in the warmest months, the insects can also cause trouble for people with weakened immune systems.

I am aware that I am fortunate; my heart is sound, and I know I would have been long dead just a decade or so ago. But this week, I can walk again, and I am savoring every minute of it. I can’t go as far as I used to, or up steep hills without stopping, but Maria and I – sometimes just me – have resumed walking together on the beautiful country roads around us.

I’m fortunate that the doctors saved my heart, and in so doing, saved me. The good news, said the cardiologist in the hospital emergency room, is that “you’re not dead.” That was good news.

I’m also conscious of the many things in my life that changed forever after that surgery. I am learning about them all the time.

Fate is coming with us; she is perfect on a walk, she never strays far and always stops and waits for us to catch up, as herding dogs will do. I can’t remember walking with only one dog, and that will soon change, hopefully.

Something good happens to my mind when I walk. Today I thought of a Buddhist saying that no one saves us but ourselves. “No one can and no one way,” I think it goes. “We ourselves must walk the path.”

This idea, that I am stronger than the things I fear and can’t control, is important to me. It helps me to feel secure, even liberated. It brings me peace. It took me a long time to learn this and believe it. When I am out walking, I feel as if I am walking the path.

For much of my life, I’ve fought what Thomas Merton called the “Turbulence Of Spirit.” That, he said, is a sign of spiritual weakness. The inside of my head often feels like a whirlpool or a broken pump.

“When we are strong,” he wrote, “we are always much greater than the things that happen to us, and the soul of a man or woman who has found him or herself is like a deep-sea in which there may be many fish: but they never come up out of the sea, and not one of them is big enough to trouble its surface.”

The strength of one’s soul is far greater than anything he feels or does, or that is done to him. That is a big idea for me.

I felt strong on my walks again, I missed them. I’m grateful for being able to do it. My summer hiatus makes me appreciate them all the more.

And beautiful country roads are perfect for walking the path.