When I was a kid, I watched Kung Fu every day after school, and loved this iconic scene from the opening where Caine walks the rice paper without leaving a mark to graduate from Kung Fu college. Turns out Fox Walking is similar.

Last week we talked about Sitting. This week, we’re talking about Walking.

My personal rediscovery of my feet came from three sources:

The first was yoga. During an intense engagement with yoga a few years back I learned to spread my fashion-cramped toes in order to ground myself during difficult asanas. My toes opened wide, taking on a permanent, natural splay. My foot size also increased by an inconvenient half size, making it newly difficult to find shoes which fit.

Next came barefoot walking. As has been oft mentioned in this blog, Erik is a barefoot runner. I don’t run, but I am a barefoot walker. Barefoot walking woke me to a world of forgotten sensations: the warm softness of asphalt, the fresh coolness of a sprinkler soaked sidewalk, the delicate slide of wet leaves beneath my toes. Feet are as sensitive as hands. It’s easy to forget this when shod.  This new stimulus was addictive. It enriched my walks. It connected me to an entirely new realm of sensory input.

The third stage was learning a technique called Fox walking through nature awareness classes I take through a great outfit here in SoCal called Earth Skills. Fox walking is a kind of mindful walking where you let your toes lead your foot and your foot leads your body. I’m going to teach it to you. Fox walking allows you to walk quietly and smoothly though natural settings. It’s primary purpose is stalking animals, because the gait you assume, ideally, does not startle them. Basically, they do not recognize it as human. It also allows you to walk while scanning the environment, instead of worrying about your steps.

Since I’m not a hunter, what Fox walking has done for me is waken my feet even more than barefoot walking. I now consider my feet antennae. In class, I’ve walked blindfolded through difficult terrain. I now can walk confidently in darkness. This opens a whole new world of night-time nature appreciation. When you are blinded by your own flashlight, your field of vision is confined to a small circle of light. The world outside that ghostly circle seems mysterious, even threatening. Walking without light allows you to see the stars, and the shapes of things. You walk slower, yes, so you see and understand more.

To anyone seeking closer contact with nature, I’d recommend considering your own two feet. They are the primary interface between you and the earth, but they are often neglected and abused, shoved into hoof-like boxes, forcing you to clomp around as if you are numb from the knee down. How can you know the earth if you can’t even feel it?

The simplest way to reconnect with your feet is to just take short walk with bare feet. Grass and sand are great , but don’t wait until you have somewhere “nice” to walk. Go for a sidewalk stroll around your neighborhood. Now that summer is here, it’s a good time for it.

Don’t go very far at first, or your arches will ache later, or your tender soles may be sore. A half-block may be enough to start!  Let your feet toughen up slowly, over the course of weeks. If you want to take a long walk, but can only barefoot it so far, take a pair of sandals with you. If you’re dubious about the whole proposition, just kick off your shoes one day while you’re out on a walk and see how it feels. I think you might be surprised how much you come to enjoy barefoot walking.

For more advanced studies, I recommend the Fox Walk.

How to Fox Walk

1. It’s best to do this with light, flexible foot wear, such as slippers or moccasins or fancy minimalist shoes or heck, go barefoot, if you can.
2. Take a relaxed stance. Keep your knees soft and springy, even slightly bent.
3. Take your arms out of the picture. No swinging arms. Fox Walking is not striding, it’s creeping. Clasp your hands in front of you or hold them bent softly at your sides. Whatever is most comfortable. Just keep them still.
4. Lift one foot, transferring all your weight to your grounded foot. Lead with the toe. Let the ball of the foot, touch earth first. Before committing to lowering your heel, pause to feel what your foot senses. Don’t look, feel. Is the ground firm? Is there a stick beneath you toes? A hole? Maybe you will shift your foot over and around it. Maybe you sense your foot can bridge it comfortably. Make your decision, and lower your heel softly. Caress the ground with your foot.
5. Now shift your weight to the committed leg, lift your rearmost leg  (now light and unencumbered by your weight), and reach out with that foot. Make the same determination regarding the ground. Let all your awareness sink into your feet, and beyond. Let it stretch deep into the ground and all around. Trust the sensations you are picking up.
6. This is how it goes: reaching with the foot, sensing, committing, rolling down in a silent, caressing footstep. Remember, caressing, not stomping! Weight shift. Repeat. It becomes smoother, faster, more automatic, with practice.
7. All the while, your head is up. Don’t look at your feet! If you do, they can’t do their job right. Keep your head high, scan around with soft eyes, taking in the beauty of the world. Your feet, meanwhile, are engaged in their own conversation with the earth, and feeding that information back to you. This is a magical kind of walking.

Obviously, you have to be very careful when you do this. This is a mindfulness practice. The goal is not to get somewhere fast, the goal is to experience every step of the journey in a completely conscious way.

And as to danger, I’ve never hurt myself during this practice. I’ve never stumbled while blindfolded or in the dark. I trust my feet. I stub my toes when I’m unmindful and in a hurry. I trip and fall in shoes, when my connection with the ground is severed.

Once you are comfortable walking this way, you can use your walk as a moving meditation. Instead of Sitting, you can move through nature, practicing the same quiet mind.

You can also use this method to walk softly to your Sitting place, so you don’t alarm the critters on the way in.

Enjoy!

A picture I took on May 5 of one of our artichoke plants. I think I grew it from seed–Franchi’s Violetto variety. In the background are Chadwick’s sweet peas.

Looks like the use of the word “artisinal” peaked–back in the 1990s!

Artisinal Everything
Artisanal Won’t Die – Jen Doll – The Atlantic Wire http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2013/04/artisanal-wont-die/63840/ …

DIY!
Make a Teardrop Camper Trailer: http://blog.makezine.com/projects/teardrop-camper-trailer/ …

Backyard Bioshelter http://www.naturalbuildingblog.com/backyard-bioshelter/ …

Shed of the Year 2013 entrants via http://soa.li/AgsuA8K

Revolutionary Finnish Wood-splitting Axe http://lloydkahn-ongoing.blogspot.com/2013/06/revolutionary-finnish-wood-splitting-axe.html#.UbeCqntv-9w.twitter …

The best LED grow lights: http://ow.ly/1XdFBr

Just Add Water: Concrete Buildings Built With Air + H2O | Designs & Ideas on Dornob http://dornob.com/just-add-water-concrete-buildings-built-with-air-h2o/ …

We close with a quote:
“Inconvenient truths tend to create more anxious neurotics than they do enlightened stakeholders.” -Douglas Rushkoff in his new book Present Shock

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Photo: Honey Love.

This week’s LA Weekly has an article, “Could LA Become a Honeybee Mecca” detailing efforts by two groups, Honey Love and the Backwards Beekeepers, to legalize beekeeping in Los Angeles. The process, while slow, looks promising thanks to the hard work of Honey Love and sympathetic city councilman Bill Rosendahl.

The article also neatly sums up the radical “backwards” approach to beekeeping advocated by LA’s maverick urban beekeeper Kirk Anderson,

Anderson learned from apiarist Charles Martin Simon, who invented the concept of “beekeeping backwards.” Simon’s approach was stupidly simple: Give the bees a clean box, put them in it and leave them alone. If they get sick? Don’t medicate them. Let them die. Then get some more bees.

Amen. Selecting for strong bees is an approach that, in my opinion, holds the answers to colony collapse disorder.

I also like Anderson’s thoughts on mainstream beekeeper’s all consuming obsession with counting varoa mites. Anderson says, “To me it’d be like joining the Kennel Club and talking about my dog’s fleas.”

Root Simple reader and all around nice person Anne Fletcher has gone entrepreneurial with a really good idea: self-watering containers for seedlings. Most anyone who has ever tried to start a garden from seeds has had the experience of having seedlings die or go shocky due to a heat wave or a day or two of neglect. Starting seeds in a self-watering container makes a whole lot of sense. These containers can go up to a week between waterings. Even better, Anne’s seed starters are made out of terracotta instead of plastic. We’ve tried out her 6-pack model. It’s really cute, and it worked like a charm.

Now she’s doing a Kickstarter so she can move her business, Orta, out of the garage and produce a technically more complex 12-pack seed-starter.  So if you’re interested in getting first grabs at her new 12-pack model, or just willing to give a hand to someone trying to start a green, local business, take a look at her Kickstarter page, and let your friends know about it, too.

And that’s not a bad thing–the old man is looking good!

Just sayin’.

This fine photo was taken by our friend John at the Age of Limits conference. He also built those nice benches for us out of firewood. We had a lot of good talks around this fire.

My dish washing accoutrements consist of cotton dish cloths–which steadily devolve lower and lower down the Rag Hierarchy as they age–and homemade scrubbies. I make my scrubbies out of net produce bags, as you can see above.

I know. I know. It’s stunning, isn’t it? A marvel of artisinal craftsmanship, if I don’t say so myself. I didn’t think anyone could top my scrubby until I ran across this:

The folks at Mooberry Farm actually take the time to stack and fold their net bags into a rectangle, then they blanket stitch the sides together, and then crochet around the edges to make it extra cute.

Now that’s a stylish scrubby! Check it out.

I think I’m going to have to make one of these.

One of my big regrets is not planting a bunch of fruit trees when we first moved into our house in 1998.* Thankfully though, we got our act together eventually. In 2011, we put in a call local fruit tree expert Steve Hovfendahl for some suggestions. His advice was based on what would grow in our warm climate as well as fruit tasting results conducted by the Dave Wilson nursery.

It’s been over two years since we planted the trees Hovfendahl suggested and they are just beginning to bear fruit. We ordered one too many trees and had to stick the Flavor Delight Aprium in a less than idea location (too much shade). Despite the lack of sun the tree bore some fruit in late May and it sure was tasty–the perfect balance between sweet and tart.

The Flavor Delight Aprium is a cross between a plum and an apricot that is hardy to zones 6 to 10 and requires less than 300 hours below 45°F, making it ideal for warm climates. It’s one of many hybrid fruit trees developed painstakingly over many years by Zaiger Genetics. In terms of taste and appearance it’s more of an apricot than a plum.

If you live in the right climate I highly recommend this tree.

* Note from Kelly: In our defense, we didn’t plant trees because we didn’t think we had room. Back then we didn’t know  about “Backyard Orchard Culture” — which, in a nutshell, means keeping fruit trees small. This is also discussed on the Dave Wilson site. This is really important information for any homesteader.

Caspar David Friedrich, Woman Before the Rising Sun, 1818-20, oil on canvas, Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany

This is called a Sit.

1) Take yourself somewhere away from noise and people. It is possible to do this in a garden, or even among your potted plants, but it is easier to do in a natural place. A quiet beach. In a meadow. By a lake. Up in the mountains. Go alone, or have your companion(s) leave you alone for a while.

2) Walk to a place that feels inviting. You’ll know it when you see it.

3) Sit. It’s best to sit on the ground if your body allows it, to be in direct bodily contact with the soil, leaves, sand, rock.  Actually, it’s even better sometimes to lay back on the ground so your whole spine is against the earth–as long as you don’t fall asleep! It’s also nice to lean against a tree. If you’ll be uncomfortable, though, bring a folding chair.

4) You’re going to sit for at least a half hour. A half hour is a good place to start. Longer sits are really nice, but don’t strain yourself in the beginning. It’s distracting to be wondering about time, so put away your time pieces. Turn off your phone. It is easy to lose track of time while Sitting, so if you’re worried about that, you can bring a kitchen timer, or set an alarm on your phone or watch. Then put those distractions somewhere you can’t see them.

5) Sitting, look around you. Sniff the air. Feel the ground under your fingers and toes. Feel the breeze on your skin.  Listen. What do you hear? Make a note of what you hear right off, because the sounds will change. By walking into a wild place, you alarm the birds and little creatures. They may make noises of challenge or warning as you take your place, or they might go silent. If you’re observant, you’ll notice their calls change as you relax–and they relax and accept you as part of the landscape.

6) There is no agenda. Just be. If your thoughts turn inward and you start thinking about work, lunch, or whatever, refocus on nature. Always come back to nature. It’s as easy as that. Be a big eye, seeing but not thinking. Look at the big vista around you. Look at the sky. Look at the small details. The ant on the grass blade. The hawk on the tall branch. Listening to the bird calls or the wind in the trees will help keep your thoughts quiet.

Remember, this is time for yourself. It’s important. We’re so trained to always be doing that it can seem wrong to do nothing. Tell yourself for the next half hour, Sitting is your job.

7) You should never Sit with expectations of what might/should happen. You must remain open, impressionable, soft. Listen with your heart as well as your ears. You may “hear” something. Feel something. Understand something. Let those impressions come. Do not dismiss them.

8) Re: animals.  It’s always a gift to see animals in nature. Your stillness might induce a wild animal to come into view, but wanting or expecting a wild animal to come into view is the surest way to drive it off.  If you really want to see an animal, pretend you’re a rock, or a bush or a tree. Really live it. For instance, if you’re a rock, feel how heavy and old you are. Feel the moss on your surface, the light scurrying feet of a lizard crawling across you. Think rock thoughts. If you can convince yourself, you may convince the animals. At any rate, you won’t be putting off anxious, predatory vibes.

9) Before you finish up, remind yourself that you belong there. You are not an intruder (whatever that angry chipmunk may say) or some sort of alien species born to sit in a cubicle and poke at glowing screens. You are part of the whole. You are related to everything around you, and everything around you is your relative.

10) When you rise, thank the place for hosting you. Say good bye to your relations. And walk peacefully back into the madness.

11) Repeat as often as possible.

John W. from Kerrville, Texas sent in some pictures of his garden. John says,

This is my first year to use compost tea.  I am growing plants in two Keyhole Gardens, self watering 5 gal plastic buckets and two hay bales (coastal Bermuda hay) that have a wooden framework on top containing bulk landscaping compost from a local nursery. My plants are growing super fast and my tomatoes are loaded.  This looks to be the best garden I have ever had.

Judging from the fencing it looks like you’ve also figured out a way to deal with the deer. Thanks for the pics John and good luck with the garden!