I recently discovered an outdoor activity that is wonderful to share with a child, called “geocaching.” All it takes is a GPS receiver and a sense of adventure. It’s basically a world-wide treasure-hunting game where participants hide, or try to find, “caches” of small toys and knickknacks which have been posted to a website with their coordinates, a description, and maybe a hint or two.

When I first found out about it, it sounded neat, “but surely there aren’t any hidden caches anywhere near this little South Louisiana town.” Au contraire, I quickly learned. The sport’s website has a cache search feature which quickly turned up a dozen or so within ten miles of our house!

The sport also encourages environmental responsibility and awareness.  Geocachers should practice CITO, or “Cache In Trash Out,” and clean up any trash they see on their outing.  Also, I have seen many caches that exist primarily to teach people about environmental features and nice, scenic areas that are “off the beaten path.”  I’ve learned a lot about my own town just by playing the game.

Of course, with my five-year-old, we don’t call it “geocaching.” With him, it’s simply “treasure hunting,” and he loves it. He’s learning some map-reading and other outdoor skills as we go. Because the caches are usually hidden in some outdoor wooded area, it’s a great way to get a little outdoor time together without it being a huge production.

For more information, visit the official site and read the FAQ.

I’ve formed yet another set of forums. Yes, yet another thing to take time away from my blogging, unfortunately. This one is for those interested in “warrior” spirituality, and the closely related subject of pagan event security. It is found at www.paganstronghold.com. I invite anyone interested in emergency preparedness, martial arts, and security from a pagan point of view to come join us there.

There are actually a few pagan warrior groups out there, but they are all local in scale and are devoted to specific pagan faiths. This forum is intended to be common ground for all of them, and is not associated with any specific pagan religion, faith, or organization. My introduction to the forum reads:

We are modern pagans of various faiths who follow a “warrior path” of spirituality. We find it spiritually fulfilling to serve our communities by preparing ourselves, mentally and physically, to put ourselves in harm’s way should the need arise. This forum offers support to those who want to serve the Pagan community as protectors and where such people can coordinate with each other and with Pagan event organizers.

Modern paganism has reached a point of critical mass at which we have caught the attention of the mass media and the general population. Among many other issues this creates for us is a more evident need for security at our events — a task we still have good reason not to trust to third parties such as off-duty police who may not be sympathetic to our ways. Our public events and large gatherings are attracting more and more unwelcome attention and a wider variety of people in general. This means that altercations, confrontations, accidents and other minor emergencies are more and more likely.

In our member forums, you will find discussions and debates about the finer points of “warrior” pagan spirituality and philosophy, strategy, martial arts, tools and equipment, and event security coordination. If you would be interested in such discussions, or in talking to us about how members might be of assistance with your upcoming event, you are invited to join us.

One can hardly be surprised that I hug trees. I call myself a “modern druid,” after all, and isn’t that what druids are supposed to do? Hang around lots of trees? There is a lot to be said for hugging a tree, really. “Tree-hugger,” I know, is a common pejorative for hippies. But really, if you’ve never done it, just let go of your inhibitions and give it a try. When I do it, I feel such a connection to the earth, to the majesty of the living world. I feel the flow of life around me. Trees truly are majestic, noble beings and that is a sense of the tree you can best get by close physical contact.

But there is another form of tree-hugging that I indulge in and that I also invite you to try: tree climbing. It’s great physical exercise for one thing, and I’m all about that. But as a spiritual exercise, it has a lot going for it as well. Take whatever benefit your may get from tree-hugging and about quadruple it.

As I compose this, I am sitting in one of my favorite meditation places. I’m about 20′ in the air, in the branches of a moderately tall magnolia tree on our property. From here, I can look down on the roof of our two-story house, but more importantly, I am in the middle of a swarm of life all around me. It’s a completely different world from that of the ground a mere 20′ below.

You are not only feeling the flow of life, you are in it. Like a baby, cradled in its mothers arms, the boughs support you, gently rocking. You face your fears, climbing higher and higher, growing bolder, stronger, trusting more in the tree to support you.

In the branches of the tree, you are in a liminal space - a “between” place that is not Earth and not Sky, and is thus charged with spiritual potential. The liminality found in the branches of a tree was not lost on the Druids or ancient Norse. Consider the mistletoe, sacred at least in part because it grows neither on the earth nor under it, is not of the earth or of the sky. In Norse legend,  Loki crafted an arrow from the plant to kill Balder. In some tellings of the story, this was possible exactly because of those liminal qualities, having been missed by the Goddess Frigga in protecting Balder from all things of the four elements, or all plants that grow on or under the Earth.

Tree-climbing has grown from a child-hood pastime to something of an “extreme sport.” But it attracts a different sort of person from, say, rock climbing or snowboarding. Unlike other “extreme” activities, it isn’t so much the actual activity itself that engages most practitioners, the climbing into the tree, but the time they spend when they get to where they are going high in the branches. There, they may spend hours relaxing, may even sleep in a specially made hammock, or may just do what I do: commune with nature in an entirely different way than is possible on the ground.

The activity can be taken up relatively inexpensively and safely. It also doesn’t require much physical conditioning. The technical equipment needed costs about $300 or so to get started. That covers the cost of a special harness, rope, and the equipment to protect the tree and the rope from each other. So far, I haven’t used any of that, instead just “free-climbing,” but I’m limiting my options thereby. Unlike in rock climbing, tree climbing gear isn’t so much for safety as it is to open up options and to make it possible to get to places you otherwise can’t reach.

A few good sites for more information are:

Tree Climbers International

New Tribe

Dancing With Trees

Okay, so I’ve been on a bit of an exercise kick lately. I only hope I can keep the enthusiasm up, and as long as I can link it to philosophy, I think I can. So, today I want to talk about going barefoot. There is simply no better way to feel the presence, the spirit, and the power of the earth. From a philosophical desire to feel a connection to the earth and to nature, going barefoot seems only, well, natural.

But what about practical health benefits? Ah, I’m glad you asked. Running barefoot seems much healthier than the regular “pounding of feet wrapped in thick padding” we normally consider running or jogging. For years, African runners have dominated the highest levels of long distance running. The reason why eluded scientists for a long time. They tested genetic explanations, but the African runners had the same lung capacity, the same leg structure, etc., that other runners did. What the African runners had over the competition was this: they had run barefoot from childhood. The proper running technique while running barefoot, such as the one taught as the pose method, uses a light step with gravity providing the driving force. It is easier on the joints and is more energy efficient. Their are multiple health benefits to going barefoot. The following is quoted from Women’s Sports & Fitness, August 1994:

A recent study demonstrates that the skin on the soles of your feet resists abrasions and blistering and that going barefoot is beneficial to the musculoskeletal structure of your feet and ankles. … Kicking off your shoes can help prevent a host of foot injuries: bunions, heel spurs, and bone deformities, among others. “Shoes act like casts, holding the bones of the foot so rigid that they can’t move fluidly,” [Steven] Robbins [MD and adjunct associate professor of mechanical engineering at Concordia University, Montreal] explains. “The foot becomes passive from wearing shoes and loses the ability to support itself.”

The Celtic Reconstructionist in me would feel remiss if he didn’t add that at least some ancient Celts apparently saw it as a weakness to wear shoes. Not surprising, since at least a few thought it was a weakness to wear any clothes at all into battle.

Today, I have gone the entire day without wearing shoes or socks. Fortunately, because I am self-employed, I can get away with this at work. When I went to run an errand, I reflexively looked for my shoes before I remembered I didn’t really need them. It was rough-going at times. Walking on hot pavement and limestone rocks were a bit painful, but there was some joy even to that — a sense of freedom and of connectedness, of being aware and alive. Also, my movements have felt more fluid and gentle. My feet are sore and tired, but I’m loving it.

I lament the thought of having to imprison my feet in padded casts again, but I will have to eventually. There are public places that frown on the practice of going barefoot, though for no reason other than social stigma, really. But, that’s social pressure I have to bend to. Business owners can kick me out, and as a trial lawyer, I am also pretty sure judges would frown on my appearing in court barefoot. So, I’m going to take it day by day, going barefoot when and where I can for now, and taking it one step at a time.

Many other facts and useful links concerning “barefooting” can be found on Wikipedia.

Though you wouldn’t know it from looking at me, I am interested in physical fitness, especially where exercise intersects with philosophy. When I was in to Taoism and Buddhism, I practiced tai chi. I still do, along with pa kua and some other kung fu stuff I can’t really pronounce.

Now that I am “neo-druid,” I have asked myself, what would a “druidic” workout look like? I would think that it should embody a “oneness” with the environment, developing awareness and balance. It would be a whole-body workout with minimal equipment. It might also take into account this facet of the training of the legendary warriors of the Fianna:

No man was taken until he had woven his hair into many braids and he was set at a run through the woods, while the ones seeking to wound him were sent after him there having been just one forest bough between them at first. If he was overtaken and wounded he was not allowed entry, If his weapons had quivered in his hand he was not taken, If his hair was disturbed in any way out of its braiding he was not taken. If he cracked a dry stick under his foot as he ran he was not taken. He also had at full speed to jump a branch level with chest and stoop under one level with his knee without breaking stride or else he was not accepted. Also he had to extract a thorn from his foot without pausing in his stride or else he was not taken.

So, what workout does all that? I present to you Parkour. It is an art, often styled an “extreme sport,” in which the participants seek to move as quickly and efficiently through whatever obstacles are in their way. With leaping, vaulting, balancing, tumbling, climbing, and crawling, it develops every part of the body. It is, more than anything, a philosophy — one that interweaves well with a modern druidic approach to life:

Basically, Parkour is a natural method to train the human body to be able to move forward quickly, making use of the environment that’s around us at any given time. This ‘art of displacement’ requires neither specific structure nor accessory for its practice. The body is the only tool. It’s an athletic discipline accessible to all, because it combines all the natural skills of the human body: running, jumping, climbing… It’s a sport that permits exploration of the potential offered by your body. It’s about being able to face the obstacles with which you are presented, whether they be in the natural environment or in the urban environment, in a search for movement that combines effectiveness and control.

Practicing parkour has made working out fun for me. It’s like being a child again and seeing the whole world as a playground. I push myself hard, right to my limits, but out of a spirit of: “let’s see if I can do this,” rather than the grim and boring workouts I used to have. I will never be able to pull off the extreme parkour, “Jackie-Chan-Like” maneuvers the founder of parkour does in this video, but that’s okay. I am only competing with myself, having fun, and getting in shape.

For more information about parkour, I suggest americanparkour.com.