Walking in circles
When you are lost, for example in the desert, you might decide to walk in a straight line in the hope to find a safe point, e.g. a road or the end of the desert. It tuns out that if there are no clear markers on which you could orient yourself, you end up walking in circles. And therefore you will end up at the same spot as you where started.
I like to experiment in getting lost by walking in circles. For that I choose for that isolated spot you can imagine, the desert. Moree specific the most emptiest desert there is: the Empty Quarter; Rub al Khali.
Here I made a circle by walking in a wadi. The perimeter is about 3.7 kilometers, which takes about 45 minutes to complete. I walked it 7 days. There were no signposts to guide me, I just followed my footsteps of the previous day.
Along the circle I created flat signs with text. You cannot see these from a far. They only show up when you are really close, they function not as waymarks but as small notes aside the track.
The circle is big enough, to be directly aware that it is a circle when you walk it. It feels like you go straight, but slowly you notice you never reach the dune in front of you, as you are bending away from it.
By walking it 7 days in a row I emphasize the endlessness of walking in circles. Every day trying to escape from getting lost, ends up every day with the same result: ending up where you started.
So by doing that some questions rise:
At the same time the act of walking brings other things. It seems boring, but it aligns body and mind. Walking itself has created the circle. Being ’en route’ is the goal, not finishing. Being on the move is reassuring. The more often you walk the circle, the deeper the groove gets. And the more aware and connected you become.
Your feet create the track, When you stop walking, the track disappears and everything is gone.
See video here