Freedom to Roam

One of my favorite pastimes is walking. When I am in out in the field in Kenya, I walk across arid, vast landscapes like the one in this image almost every day, but for the most part, never alone. Unlike this Massai man with his spear in hand, I can only head out on my walks with forethought. Alone, I could be endangered by a lion or become lost.

I marvel at this Massai man, carrying no earthly clutter, and how he knows how to co-habit with animals and other forces I might fear. This landscape is his backyard. Born into it, intrinsically tuned to the variations in climate, animal life, and available life-sustaining resources, he is comfortable, confident, calm.

I deeply admire the harmony the Maasai people cultivate with their rugged surroundings, a balance I strive to practice in my own life. This man, in his solitary connection with the earth, embodies a rare and precious solitude that is neither lonely nor contrived. In this moment, there is a purity, a stripping away of artifice that speaks to something primal, something reaching back to our origins. Though we walk on different lands, we share a quiet kinship with the essence of reality we both seek in our journeys.