DAY 23 OF THE JOURNEY — FOREST IN THE FOG
Inspired by THE WALKER AND HIS SHADOW: MYTH OF
A NOMADIC TOWER (1), section 2.5. The Symbol in Constant Motion
There are days when one goes out to walk to travel a path.
And there are others when one goes out to walk because something inside needs the path to find them.
Today was one of those days.
DAY 23
The fog began before dawn.
When I reached the forest, I could barely distinguish the first trees.
Branches appeared and disappeared.
The paths faded away just a few meters ahead.
Shapes seemed incomplete.
The whole world seemed to have forgotten its contours.
And yet, I had never seen the forest with such clarity.
Because when the obvious disappears, other things begin to emerge.
The sound of a branch.
The smell of damp earth.
My breathing.
The weight of my feet.
The brush of a leaf against my clothes.
Water pooled on a stone.
A bird singing without letting itself be seen.
The fog was not hiding the forest.
It was teaching me to look at it in a different way.
I have been walking for twenty-three days.
Twenty-three days learning something I was never taught in school:
walking can also be a form of creation.
At first, I believed that to create, I needed to sit down.
A desk.
A notebook.
A computer.
A silent room.
Today I am beginning to suspect I was wrong.
Perhaps many of our best ideas do not appear when we sit down to look for them.
Perhaps they appear when we stop chasing them.
A walk opens a strange space between thought and the world.
The body moves forward.
The mind is liberated.
The senses awaken.
And then something unexpected appears:
an association,
an image,
a question,
a word,
a memory,
a character,
a story.
The walker begins to become a creator.
THE FOREST AS A NOTEBOOK
Today I understood that the walker’s notebook is not always made of paper.
Sometimes it is made of trees.
Of paths.
Of stones.
Of clouds.
Of sounds.
Of shadows.
Of distances.
Of encounters.
The forest can be a notebook.
And each step, a line.
Each discovery, a word.
Each symbol, a phrase.
Each emotion, a chapter.
Perhaps that is why walking and writing are profoundly similar.
Both leave traces.
The difference is that the writer leaves words on a page.
The walker leaves a sequence of decisions on the territory.
THE FOG
About a hundred meters from the start of the trail, I found a fallen branch.
It had a strange shape.
It looked like a spiral.
I stopped.
Not because I needed to rest.
Because the branch had stopped me.
I observed it for a few minutes.
And I thought:
Every return can be a form of evolution.
I kept walking.
Further on, I heard a bird.
I couldn’t see it.
I could only hear it.
A tiny voice piercing the fog.
Then I thought:
Beauty does not need to be visible to exist.
I continued.
A few minutes later, a small clearing appeared.
I hadn’t seen it when passing by on other days.
I wasn’t sure if I truly hadn’t seen it or if I simply hadn’t been prepared to see it.
And another phrase appeared:
The landscape also changes when the one who looks at it changes.
Then I understood something.
Symbols do not necessarily appear because the forest places them in front of us.
Sometimes they appear because we have learned to recognize them.
THE SYMBOL IN MOTION
For a long time, I thought a symbol was an image.
A cross.
A spiral.
A tree.
A mountain.
A star.
But today the forest taught me something else.
A symbol can be an event.
A coincidence.
A direction.
A pause.
A repetition.
An object that appears exactly when we needed to find it.
A sound that forces us to stop.
A path we decide not to take.
The symbol is not necessarily still.
The symbol may be walking with us.
And perhaps that is why our book spoke of the Symbol in Constant Motion. (1)
Because a symbol changes when the walker who interprets it changes.
The same stone may be just a stone for one person.
For another, it can become memory.
For another, a warning.
For another, an idea.
For another, the beginning of a poem.
The stone did not change.
The walker did.
THE CREATIVE WALKER
And here an idea appeared that I want to keep in this notebook:
the Creative Walker is not necessarily a writer.
It can be anyone.
A child.
An elderly person.
A scientist.
A farmer.
A student.
An artist.
A person who has never written a poem.
They don’t need to know how to draw.
They don’t need to know philosophy.
They don’t need to study literature.
They only need to walk with enough attention to allow something to happen to them.
Afterward, they can decide what to do with what they found.
They can write it.
Draw it.
Photograph it.
Tell it.
Turn it into music.
Ask a question.
Invent a story.
Or simply keep it.
Because creating does not always mean producing a work.
Sometimes it means allowing an experience to transform our way of seeing.
THE RITUAL OF THE CREATIVE WALKER
Perhaps that is why human beings, since ancient times, invented rituals.
Not necessarily because they needed explanations.
But because they needed to create conditions for something different to occur.
A circle.
A dance.
A walk.
A song.
A campfire.
A painting.
A mask.
A silence.
A route.
An encounter.
Long before academic venues existed, human beings had already discovered mechanisms to awaken the imagination.
Walking belongs to that ancient family of experiences.
And perhaps we can recover it.
Not as nostalgia.
But as a contemporary tool for creating.
AN EXPERIMENT FOR YOU
If you are reading this while sitting down, you don’t need to finish the article to begin.
You can do it now.
Get up.
Go out.
You don’t need to go far.
You don’t need to prepare a major expedition.
Go to a quiet street.
To a park.
To a square.
To a trail.
To any place where you can walk safely.
And for the first five minutes, don’t try to think about anything special.
Simply walk.
Then, start looking for three things:
- Something you hadn’t seen before.
- It can be tiny.
- A crack.
- A leaf.
- A shadow.
- A window.
- A stone.
- A sound.
- Something that sparks a question.
- You don’t need to answer it.
- Just formulate it.
- Something that could become a symbol.
- Don’t ask what it means.
- Ask yourself:
- What could it mean for me?
When you return, write three lines.
No more.
Don’t try to make literature.
Don’t try to be profound.
Simply write:
I saw…
I wondered…
And then I thought…
That is enough.
You have just started your first Creative Walker’s notebook.
WALK-RWD CAN ALSO WALK HERE
Now imagine we do this exercise accompanied by a tool like WALK-RWD.
The system records the journey.
But it is not limited to recording kilometers.
It can save photographs.
Words.
Sounds.
Drawings.
Pauses.
Changes in route.
Observations.
Questions.
And afterward, it can help us relate them.
It could discover that during certain walks we always photograph trees.
That our questions become longer near the water.
That we write more when we walk alone.
That certain places trigger memories.
That our routes change according to our mood.
Not to tell us what we should feel.
But to show us something we might not have noticed:
our walking also has a narrative.
And that narrative can become creation.
THE READER WHO LEAVES THE BOOK
Here another connection appears.
For a long time, we imagined the reader as someone sitting in front of a book.
But perhaps the reader of the future is different.
They read.
They close the book.
They go out.
They walk.
They observe.
They return.
They write.
They read again.
And then they discover that what they read has begun a dialogue with what they lived.
That reader no longer remains immobile.
They become an Evolutionary Reader.
And the book ceases to be merely an object.
It becomes a door.
Perhaps this is one of the most beautiful functions of literature:
not to keep us within the pages, but to help us step out into the world with new eyes.
A MESSAGE FOR THE IMMOBILE READER
Maybe you are reading this now from a chair.
From a bed.
From an office.
From a train.
From a café.
It doesn’t matter.
I’m not going to tell you that sitting is wrong.
I am also sitting as I write these words.
What matters is that we do not remain immobile out of forgetfulness.
If you can walk, walk.
Not because you have to meet a quota.
Not because you must conquer a distance.
Not because an application commands you to.
Walk because your body needs to remember that it can.
Walk to think.
Walk to stop thinking.
Walk to look.
Walk to converse.
Walk to be alone.
Walk to find a question.
Walk to seek an answer.
And sometimes…
walk without looking for anything at all.
Because perhaps it is precisely then that something will appear.
THE INVITATION
You don’t need a mountain.
You don’t need a forest.
You don’t need fog.
You don’t need a great adventure.
You can start on your own street.
The most extraordinary path can be three meters from your door.
Creativity doesn’t always wait in extraordinary places.
Sometimes it is hidden in what we see every day and never truly look at.
That is why I propose something:
Tomorrow, walk for twenty minutes through a familiar place.
But do it as if it were the first time.
Don’t use the eyes of someone who already knows.
Use the eyes of someone who has just arrived.
Look for a symbol.
Don’t force it.
Let it appear.
And when you find it, ask it:
What have you come to tell me?
Maybe it won’t answer.
That’s fine.
The best symbols don’t always answer immediately.
Sometimes they stay walking with you for years.
CLOSING OF DAY 23
The fog began to lift near noon.
The forest slowly regained its contours.
Trees became trees again.
The path became a path again.
Distances returned.
Clarity returned.
But something had changed.
Me.
I put away my notebook.
I looked at my boots.
They were covered in mud.
I had walked a little over three kilometers.
Nothing extraordinary.
I hadn’t conquered a mountain.
I hadn’t discovered an unknown territory.
I hadn’t achieved any sports record.
And yet, I felt I had traveled an enormous distance.
Because today I hadn’t walked only on the earth.
I had walked upon a question.
And the question had led me to a place that does not appear on any map.
Inside myself.
Then I wrote the last phrase of the day:
Today I didn’t advance more than three kilometers. But I traveled an entire galaxy inside me.
I closed the notebook.
Tomorrow will be Day 24.
There will be another path.
Another question.
Another symbol.
Another possibility to create.
And perhaps you can begin your own Day 1.
You don’t need to wait until you have time.
You don’t need to wait until you have inspiration.
You don’t need to wait to know what you want to find.
Go out and walk first.
Inspiration can catch up with you on the way.
FIVE PHRASES FROM THE CREATIVE WALKER
- We don’t always walk to find a place; sometimes we walk to find an idea.
- The landscape doesn’t only change when the world changes; it also changes when the one who looks at it changes.
- A symbol can be an image, but it can also be an event that decides to walk with you.
- Creativity doesn’t always start with a blank page; sometimes it starts with a path.
- Don’t wait for inspiration to walk. Walk and allow inspiration to have a place to find you.
A FINAL INVITATION
If you have reached this point while sitting, perhaps that is enough reading.
Close this post.
Get up.
Open the door.
Walk for twenty minutes.
And when you return, write only three things:
What you saw.
What you felt.
What you discovered.
You don’t know what they will be yet.
That is precisely the wonderful part.
The Creative Walker’s notebook begins when the path begins.
(1) Loya Lopategui, Carlos, The Walker and His Shadow: Myth of a Nomadic Tower, EMULISA, Mexico, 2025. Available on Amazon, Kindle Edition: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GQ2DS9RY