(Don’t ask me! I don’t know how that happened either. I certainly don’t feel so old.)

Many of my running friends mark milestones in age with a race distance to match. For me that would me running a fifty kilometre race before I roll over the odometer on my age. It is not necessarily impossible, but as I have informally stepped away from such long races (a post for another blog) it does not seem a good fit. 

Instead, I have opted to celebrate and commemorate by trying to do fifty walks before I turn fifty.

Loosely structured, those walks will follow a couple rules: they must be of a certain distance, need to contain something I would consider “exploration” and also they should present me with an opportunity to create. What this will almost always and usually mean is that I will be walking a photo expedition.

I used to do these photo expeditions, as I called them, quite frequently: camera charged and ready, I would just go out into the suburban wilderness near where I live and snap hundreds of photos. No rules. No restrictions. No checklist. No forcing myself into boxes. Just taking photos for the sheer joy of exploring the craft.

Some of my best pictures and much of my best learning happened when the only goal was fresh air and having an open mind to opportunity.

Maybe what I’m really hoping to achieve with rekindling my long walks this summer isn’t so much about the walks but finding fifty opportunities to take photos.