Heroes and Mystics 2025

In my reading of Chapter 6 of the American Camino: Walking as a Spiritual Practice on the Appalachian Trail, flow was best summarized as a religious experience of total solitude. As I was reading, I was trying to think of what flow would look like in my experience and every example honestly made me more confused. That was until the example of  the students in Scotland that had the MP3 players. These students had a small connection to the biggest disrtupter of peace, social media, and it disrupted a lot of the experience on the trip. Music has always been an escape for me, as it is for most, but it triggers parts of experience that take me out of the moment with that of my surroundings. This helped me understand that flow was not just about connection, but a more out of body experience that can truly only be experienced with that of the natural world. A quote from the text that best describes this, “...the happening of flow is an action of no-mindness.”. It is not meant to be a cons...

Throughout my life, I have had the privilege of visiting many historical sites worldwide. From the ancient ruins of the Ancestral Puebloans in Colorado to the haunting battlefields of Virginia, and the solemn D-Day memorials in Normandy, France, each site holds a unique and profoundly meaningful story. As an empathetic person, passionate places like these often invoke strong physical and expressive reactions. Their metaphorical weight has only grown heavier and more meaningful as I have aged, providing a deeper connection to the past and a greater understanding of humanity's journey. Some questions to think about: - How do these locations continually affect those who visit for educational purposes? How can they maintain the power and energy from events hundreds of years ago? - Does the energy from largely disastrous events carry on without memorials being built? - How has age affected the interpretation and understanding of these events changed? (due to more emotional intelligence...

In American Camino, flow is described as, “the merging of action and awareness” (Redick 240). Throughout chapter six, Walking in Wilderness as Spiritual Practice, Kip Redick explores the journeys of hikers on the Appalachian Trail (AT) and how their beliefs on religion evolved along the way. One of the most important aspects of this chapter is how flow shapes a hiker’s experience, allowing them to be fully in the moment while still moving forward. In this book flow is discussed through monastic practices, showing how long-distance walking can act as a spiritual discipline. Some hikers Redick met started their own journey with religious intentions, while others had no religious beliefs at all. Yet, as he notes early in the chapter, even those who had no religious agenda often found themselves encountering something deeper within, something that could only be fully understood through a religious or spiritual lens. This essay will explore how flow functions as a means of exegeting and res...

  QUIES First, I’ll admit I’m not a huge fan of walking. Maybe short distances, but put me on a mountain trail and I’m out. As I read through Chapter 6, I kept thinking to myself, “This sounds like a really cool experience, but how could I even get to that level of flow?” I kept on reading until I got to page 252. Suddenly the theme was not a walk, but a dance . I kept reading and saw it expanded on page 254. I realized that maybe I had been thinking about flow all wrong.  I may not be a hiker, but I do know a thing or two about dance—specifically ballroom dance. I decided I had to start the chapter all over again with this in mind. Something my coach often reminds us of is to not “try to control how our feet move, but to lean into where you want to go, and let your feet take you there.” Yes, we learn techniques and specific steps for different dances, but that only gets you so far. Listening to the music to keep in time only gets you so far. I’ve danced with more than a few p...

Throughout my reading of the American Camino by Professor Kip Redick, I have realized that what he defines as “flow,” provides me a new way to view what it means to truly self-reflect. His deep spiritual connections with the Appalachian Trail have allowed me to rethink what all my time spent outdoors hiking and biking with buddies truly was. Within Chapter 6, “Spiritual Rambling,” Professor Redick introduces the idea of “spiritual rambling” as a form of walking that is more than just a physical journey, and that it is a mindful, reflective practice. The act of walking becomes a mode of engaging with one’s inner life and the sacred, being more of s spiritual journey. To follow this up, Professor Redick reimagines the Appalachian Trail as a modern pilgrimage route for hikers, not only serving as a physical trail, but as participating in a ritual journey that echoes historical and spiritual quests for meaning, purpose, and transformation. His “spiritual rambling” differs vastly from what...

In the sixth chapter of American Camino , the concept of flow is extensively explained in the context of spiritual walking. It is described as unification of action and awareness to create a state in which thoughts are non-existent. The hiker just moves through the world, extremely aware and focused on the wilderness around them but unable to thoroughly reflect on it in that moment. It is only afterwards that the hiker is able to recall the memories from their flow state. Flow can occur in different types of people like artists, scientists and athletes (Redick 249). I was actually very surprised to see this term in the book because it becomes one of the central components in a manga I read called Blue Lock. The story followed a boy named Isagi Yoichi, a high school soccer player who got a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to join a soccer program called Blue Lock meant to create the greatest striker in the world. Out of 300 players, he was ranked 299 th , making him one of the weakest p...

 At the intersection of business-oriented self-actualization content, psychology, and the personal artist experience—three topical dialogues I’ve regularly consumed throughout my life—you often hear discussions of flow. These discussions typically characterize flow as a tool, sometimes a “cheat-code,” for increasing productivity and generating new ideas. I’ve also heard flow described before as a state of play, occurring when appropriate challenge meets proficiency, teasing the brain into a state of utter engagement and absorption. While these descriptions are true, Chapter 6 of American Camino , “Spiritual Rambling,” approaches the concept differently than I have seen before, emphasizing flow as a spiritual, transformational experience rather than just a performance enhancer. In one word, flow is simply: immersion. The natural product of such immersion is seemingly effortless application, unlooked-for revelation, and unfettered creation. As discussed in Chapter 6, entering the flo...

  Flow /flō/ verb proceed or be produced smoothly, continuously, and effortlessly. noun a steady, continuous stream of something. a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter ; the experience is so enjoyable that people will continue to do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it. Kip Redick wrote American Camino: Walking as Spiritual Practice on the Appalachian Trail, as a way to discuss how philosophical occurrences can happen in conversation with nature, on the Appalachian Trail. I have never walked the Appalachian Trail, and nor do I plan to (sorry, Prof.), but there are interesting things to gnaw over written in the pages of the book as it discusses perception and how the Trail can change you as you separate from one society and sort of make your way into another. When I read Chapter 6 of American Camino: Walking as Spiritual Practice on the Appalachian Trail , I thought that flow was something I had never experienced. ...

The term “flow” is not so unusual a term in everyday life. Most people are familiar with the expressions of “going with the flow” or “flow with the tide,” and they are meant to symbolize life as a flowing stream of events and we are pulled by the current of life toward a destination we have not yet seen. We often find ourselves overwhelmed by the flow of life, as it pulls us and stretches us in ways beyond our control, but the flow of our mind is not necessarily the same as the stream of the motion of life. Many of us have experienced the feeling of “getting in the flow” of things, where our minds become hyper focused on one thing that we do not realize the world continues to move rapidly around. As an avid reader, I am well experienced in becoming so endorsed in a book by interacting with the characters, becoming invested in their goals, experiencing their victories and defeats, when I suddenly pause and realize reality is still in motion and everything I had just gone through was...

 The concept of “flow”, is often described as the reflection of a harmonious state of life, where an individual’s psyche and deeds are aligned, propelling and providing one with the energy and capacity to journey onward. In Chapter 6 of "American Camino: Walking as Spiritual Practice on the Appalachian Trail," titled "Spiritual Rambling," the author explores this fascinating state of being. By delving into the nature of flow, the text provides the potential for exegeting and rescripting one’s personal lives and perspectives. This reflection can provide a link to spiritual beliefs that were previously closed off due to preconceived stigmas. With these viewpoints, devotional contemplative practices can seem drastic, however, the natural connection to human belief can reshape one’s understanding of spirituality and guide one toward a more mindful and meaningful existence. In my life, flow has allowed me to reflect upon my actions and find internal peace with my mistake...

  We all have those moments in our lives where we experience something so abstract and great that any explanation of our experience seems to fall short of what we felt in that moment. I believe these moments to be the experience of flow. In the American Camino, Professor Redick explains how flow isn’t easily defined using prosaic language. Instead, it has shared characteristics with that of the poetic. “Poets use elements of the sensory world in order to reach what transcends it” (page 244). When we experience flow, our minds are separated from the action, in a state of mindlessness. When we look back on our experience is when we realize that flow occurred, and we can invoke memory to describe or explain our experience. However, memory and language carry with them preconceptions and prejudices that “thematize” our recollection of flow, meaning our words “grasp the memories’ images and organize them according to a preconception… We order the memory so that our thoughts become meani...

Throughout reading the assigned chapter in American Camino, I have come to realize that flow is not something that is wholly theoretical. It is something that we experience everyday. Flow is the natural ability to immerse oneself in something and lose track of time. One may experience flow in many different ways. For myself, I believe that my interactions with writing and reading poetry are where I most experience flow. In order to write poetry (or more specifically: write good poetry), I need to be in a certain head space. I have a hard time sitting down and writing a poem. What do I write about? What form do I use? What goal am I trying to achieve in writing this poem? Am I writing for an audience or am I writing for myself? If I try to write without inspiration striking or without the aid of flow, I find doubt creeping into my thoughts. Why am I doing this? What am I doing? There are so many other things I should be doing right now. These thoughts can cloud my mind, causing me to ...