REGINA, Sask. — The year Ken Wilson turned 50, he felt called to walk a pilgrimage route across northern Spain. He had never undertaken anything like it before, but the journey would change the way he understood walking, the world around him and his own struggle with depression.
More than a decade later, the Regina writer is sharing what he has learned in Walking Well: Trails, Paths, Pilgrimages, a collection of essays exploring the physical, emotional and spiritual dimensions of travelling on foot.
Wilson will launch the book at the Black Bird Commons bookstore in Regina on Oct. 28.
“I’ve always been a walker,” Wilson said. “But in 2013, when I decided to walk the Camino de Santiago, the pilgrimage path in northern Spain, I rediscovered what travelling on foot meant to me.”
The experience helped him develop a daily walking practice that has become central to his life. Today, his commute to the University of Regina, where he teaches English and creative writing, takes him through Wascana Centre.
“I don’t know what I’d do if I couldn’t start my day that way,” he said.
For Wilson, walking is about more than getting exercise or reaching a destination. It offers a way to interrupt the patterns of thought that can make depression so difficult to escape, while creating opportunities to notice and connect with the world.
“I never imagined that I would be free of that bleak, numb sadness, that awful self-loathing, which I’d carried with me since childhood,” he said. “Walking has helped me experience joy and connection instead. I feel so grateful for that.”
Wilson said his daily walking practice has been part of his experience of no longer needing medication for depression. He is careful, however, not to present his own experience as a universal solution.
“Of course, everyone is different, and what worked for me might not work for others,” he said.
Still, he believes walking outdoors is worth considering for people dealing with anxiety or depression, even when they have little time to spare.
“I know that might feel like a luxury, since many of us are legitimately overwhelmed by work or other responsibilities,” Wilson said. “But even five or ten minutes might make a difference. Again, it’s worth trying, just to see if it helps you.”
Finding connection in the everyday
The essays in Walking Well move between places and experiences, from the famous Spanish pilgrimage route to the paths beside Wascana Creek, from British Columbia’s Pacific Rim National Park to the Haldimand Tract in southwestern Ontario.
Some journeys are physically demanding. Others are as ordinary as walking across a local park or stepping from the front door into the yard.
That range reflects Wilson’s belief that meaningful experiences do not necessarily require an ambitious destination or a long journey.
“One of the journeys I write about in Walking Well is from the front door of our house to a chair in the side yard,” he said.
The value, he suggests, lies partly in slowing down enough to notice what might otherwise go unseen.
Wilson describes greeting the ducks and geese he encounters around Wascana Lake, sometimes in English and sometimes in Plains Cree, a language he studied while completing his PhD.
“tânisi, niskak, I say. tânisi, sîsîpak. Hello geese, hello ducks,” he said.
“That brief moment of connection helps to pull me out of myself, to interrupt any ruminations cycling through my mind.”
Even recognizing a familiar tree as it changes through the seasons, or exchanging a smile with someone walking a dog, can create a sense of connection, he said.
“I think walking helps with emotional regulation because it provides an opportunity to connect with the world, to pay attention to the other creatures we live alongside,” Wilson said. “Those connections don’t have to be deep to be meaningful.”
He also sees walking as a counterpoint to the constant stimulation of modern life, particularly the pull of social media.
“It’s particularly important to make those connections these days, when so many of us are consumed by social media feeds which promise relationship but deliver disconnection,” he said.
“You know how the kids tell each other to ‘touch grass’? Walking is a form of touching grass, even if we’re stepping on a paved footpath.”
Walking with other people can also change the nature of a conversation, Wilson said. Travelling side by side may feel more comfortable than sitting face to face, allowing people to share observations and experiences as they move through a place together.
“As we move together, we might begin to understand the web of obligations that link us, the experiences we share with each other,” he said.
Walking through a difficult history
Not all the journeys in Wilson’s book are about personal healing. Some confront uncomfortable histories and the responsibilities people have to the places where they live.
Wilson, a settler-descendant who grew up in southwestern Ontario, writes about walking through the Haldimand Tract, the land along the Grand River associated with a 1784 grant to the Haudenosaunee following their displacement during the American Revolution.
The territory stretches roughly 300 kilometres, a distance Wilson wanted to understand through physical experience rather than historical knowledge alone.
“Before I made that walk, I knew that the Haldimand Tract, which covers the entire Grand River valley, is about 300 kilometres long,” he said. “I wanted to understand how much land that was, with my body, not just my mind.”
Walking the distance gave him a different perspective on the history of colonialism and the loss of Haudenosaunee land.
“After I took off my boots and waded into Lake Erie on the final day of that journey, I knew what 300 kilometres feels like, and I understood the gravity of the theft of Haudenosaunee land,” Wilson said.
The book also considers how walking can bring people together around shared grief. One essay reflects on his participation in Saskatchewan’s Walking with Our Angels procession, which draws attention to high suicide levels in northern communities.
For Wilson, these experiences demonstrate that walking can connect people not only to the natural world but also to difficult questions about history, community and responsibility.
A practice that keeps unfolding
Wilson’s first book, Walking the Bypass: Notes on Place from the Side of the Road, explored place and movement through poetry and creative nonfiction. Its manuscript won the 2022 City of Regina Writing Award.
With Walking Well, he continues that exploration, examining how the act of moving through a landscape can change what a person notices, understands and carries with them.
He hopes readers will find something of their own experience in the essays, whether they are drawn to pilgrimage, interested in the history of a place or simply looking for a reason to step outside.
“Walking has become a big part of my life,” Wilson said. “Walking Well explores the way it helps me to connect with places and other people, and myself. That’s why I write about it.”
And while the book considers journeys spanning hundreds of kilometres, Wilson’s invitation is not necessarily to go far.
“If Walking Well encourages somebody to lace up their shoes and go for a stroll?” he said. “All the better.”
The book’s description offers a final glimpse of the perspective at the heart of Wilson’s writing: “What a world this is that contains such loveliness. I want to be part of it for as long as I can.”
