{"id":1828,"date":"2019-11-19T00:00:38","date_gmt":"2019-11-19T08:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetrailmaster.com\/?p=1828"},"modified":"2023-11-20T19:08:32","modified_gmt":"2023-11-21T03:08:32","slug":"hike-with-gratitude","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetrailmaster.com\/tales\/hike-with-gratitude\/","title":{"rendered":"Hike With Gratitude: Giving Thanks On the Trail"},"content":{"rendered":"

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What happens when we hike with gratitude? Amazing things!<\/strong><\/p>\n

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\u201cGod has two dwellings: one in heaven, and the other in a meek and thankful heart,\u201d declared Izaak Walton, the 17th century English writer now regarded as the “patron saint of fishing.”<\/p>\n

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Hike with gratitude and count your blessings–in Izaak Walton\\’s England or wherever you roam<\/p><\/div>\n

Walton\u2019s walks by the river Dove and along the banks of many other brooks and ponds, inspired him to write \u201cThe Compleat Angler<\/a>,\u201d still regarded as the greatest book ever about fishing. His book combines practical advice on the art of angling with some highly moral and spiritual passages. Walton\u2019s gratitude for God\u2019s gifts, the beauties of pastoral England and the companionship of his fellows shines right through in his book, as admired now as it was when published in 1653.<\/p>\n

\u201cNobody expresses their gratitude about anything or thanks me,\u201d you say. Likely as not, you\u2019re probably right. Try to remember the last time anyone thanked you for anything. It was probably a \u201cThanks-and-have-a-nice-day,\u201d at the check-out counter from a supermarket cashier or a \u201cThanks for your order,\u201d from a fast-food franchise. Such gratitude!<\/p>\n

Now try to remember the last time anyone thanked you for anything important. It\u2019s a dispiriting cycle: we rarely get thanks, and we rarely give it. Even those of us who try hard not to be thoughtless are often thankless–except perhaps for the one hour a week we spend inside our house of worship.<\/p>\n

Action Item: Hike with Gratitude<\/h2>\n

My suggestion: On one walk\u2014better yet one hike\u2014a week use a few minutes of your time to exercise your gratitude while you stretch your limbs. List everything in your life that you are thankful for, and everything that you enjoy. Contemplate this list on your hike.<\/p>\n

Warning: this exercise in gratitude might require considerable spiritual effort, may stretch, to the point of strain, a rarely used muscle. Expressing thanks might seem ever-so-saccharine; to the most curmudgeonly among us, it might elicit a gag response.<\/p>\n

And yet hiking with an attitude of gratitude takes us someplace special. The way it helps us is by bringing our life into balance. Just as hiking integrates the body and mind, expressing gratitude integrates what\u2019s all right with our world with what\u2019s wrong.<\/p>\n

Giving thanks brings our life into harmony. No wonder scripture, such as this passage from Psalm 92, often describes gratitude toward God as \u201csinging praises.\u201d<\/p>\n

We can be thankful for possessions and money and yet for the freedom to walk the whole earth, and for the great benefits of our creative spirit, our life and health, we consider ourselves under no obligation to express any gratitude.<\/p>\n

By expressing our gratitude, we can hike from feeling stressed to feeling blessed. A grateful thought toward heaven is the simplest of prayers.<\/p>\n

Hike with gratitude.<\/p>\n

Hike On,<\/p>\n

John McKinney
\nThe Trailmaster<\/p>\n

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By expressing our gratitude, we can hike from feeling stressed to feeling blessed. A grateful thought toward heaven is the simplest of prayers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12891,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[97],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetrailmaster.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1828"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetrailmaster.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetrailmaster.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetrailmaster.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetrailmaster.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1828"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetrailmaster.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1828\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12898,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetrailmaster.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1828\/revisions\/12898"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetrailmaster.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetrailmaster.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetrailmaster.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetrailmaster.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}