The sand is the color of gas station paper towels. It bears the tattoos of at least a dozen different tire prints. Crossed at various intervals by the undulating swath of a snake of unknown venomosity, the road rolls out in both directions like bolts of cloth. My feet slap rhythmically over the low swells, tiny rocks catching in the treads of my shoes. This is me walking. Every day. It was 30 years ago this spring that I began.

Chosen as a “Community Hero,” one of eight local residents who would carry the 1996 Olympic Torch through Statesboro on its way to the Games in Atlanta, I was both excited and afraid, excited to be a part of the event that had long held me in thrall and afraid that I would embarrass myself by huffing and puffing my way a tenth-of-a-mile down Highway 301. It was all the motivation I needed to hit the road.

That first afternoon I locked the door of my little brick office anchoring the bottom of the hill behind First Baptist Church, headed up the steep angle of Sharpe Street, and turned left onto North Main. I walked until I got tired and then turned around and walked back. I did it again the next day. And the next.

It is interesting what you can learn about the town in which you’ve lived your entire life when you slow down long enough to look at things. I memorized every crack in the sidewalk and timed the traffic lights so that I had to slow only minimally at the crosswalks. I chatted with people sitting on porches and knew when the azaleas at the Chamber of Commerce were blooming. I read the plaque on that big rock outside the library.

The evening of July 13 was left damp by an afternoon cloudburst. Shallow puddles on the asphalt reflected the flashing headlights of the police cruiser that led the way as one torch bearer passed the flame to the next. The highway was lined with people we knew and I remember telling someone in the days following that everyone should have the opportunity to run down the streets of her hometown while her community cheered.

The next day was a Sunday and I rested, but on Monday I was walking again. I stretched my route to encompass the Presbyterian church outside town. I watched football practice along the banks of Beautiful Eagle Creek and picked magnolia blossoms from branches hanging over the sidewalk at the Botanic Garden. I watched the seasons change.

Eventually I changed offices, changed jobs. I left the sidewalks and streets for dirt roads and ditches. And I kept walking. What started as a singular endeavor became a discipline and the discipline became a routine, something I have done for three decades now without a lot of thought.

But today is different. Today, passing the cluster of unmatched mailboxes tilting into each other at the corner of the field, watching Owen run madly through the underbrush on the trail of a rabbit, noticing the black lace shadows of pine trees thrown at my feet, I recognize that what I am doing is not a routine.

A routine is a fixed program, undertaken so often as to become automatic, mechanical. A routine can be performed with little thought or awareness. Walking is far more than that.

Walking is ritual. Walking – like communion, like baptism – creates, connects, illuminates. Walking, I undress myself of all the questions I cannot answer, the problems I cannot solve. Walking, I open my eyes to see the earth and sky in which I am enveloped. Walking, I participate in the profoundest of all rituals – the recognition of being alive.

Behind me the sun begins to angle its light, pushing me back in the direction from which I have come, back to the spot from which tomorrow I will walk again.