So What is Ambulate?

 


So what is Ambulate?

In short, call it a newsletter, call it a blog. It’s a series of weekly posts, maybe more, that address the fine art of moving, both mentally and physically, of wandering and wondering about the material and the intellectual world. It’s home for all my thoughts and cultural doings and thinkings that don’t include my fiction, the other realm in which I write. No fiction here, just real life as I live it.

What will those posts include? Travel certainly, both near and far, the small journeys beyond the front door, but the longer ones too, to places beyond these shores. But not just physical travel.

A great deal of the journeying I and most people do is via the experiences of others. Thoughts transport. So, there will be plenty here on other people’s work. Expect book and film reviews. Expect podcast recommendations. Expect galleries and theatre shows. Expect culture.

A good deal of the journeying I do takes place with my backside firmly grounded on a cushion. I am a meditator. I study Zen. Expect some of that, both as an individual topic and woven into the fabric of other things.

Plenty of people inspire me. There will be a regular pantheon of heroines and heroes. Expect Gary Snyder. Expect Geoff Dyer and Craig Mod. Expect Yvon Chouinard.

Talking of Chouinard, expect gear reviews too. Moving well throughout the landscape, particularly where I live in England, requires good kit. I try to be thrifty and mindful in my purchases. Living outdoors well and cheaply, considering and caring for kit takes some time.

In short, expect variety. What unites it all is the business of ambulation in its widest sense, wandering and wondering, the movement of mind and body, the stirring of ideas. We can enjoy that voyage together.

 

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