Alison Byrd: How Flow functions as it rescripts life-stories through the Appalachian Trail and the Camino de Santiago

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 rescripting a life-story, using both the AT and the Camino de Santiago as examples. By examining the stories of hikers on these paths, I will show how flow serves as a process of transformation, leading individuals to reinterpret their past and reshape their identity through an embodied spiritual experience.

In the beginning Chapter six, Redick highlights the way hikers on the AT distinguish between spirituality and religion. He does not try to define these terms himself but instead asks hikers how they interpret them. Most hikers describe spirituality as the interior experience, while religion is seen as institutional. However, he finds that many hikers have little formal understanding of religion itself. One hiker, Popsicle, anti-religious and saw the trail as more of a party than a spiritual journey. Redick does not question Popsicle’s beliefs out loud, but wonders why Popsicle views drinking and partying as separate from religion. He later considers that Popsicle may have been experiencing a spiritual crisis without realizing it. Another hiker, Sandelman, believed the AT was simply about man and nature, not religion. Sandelman’s perspective fits within the common distinction between spirituality and religion, seeing the AT as a space for personal reflection rather than structured belief. As Redick and his students collected stories from hikers, they began to see how long-distance walking fosters a religious experience even for those who do not believe in religion. William James, in “The Variety of Religious Experience, writes, ‘Religion…shall mean for us the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine’” (Redick 235). This suggests that religion is not just about institutions but about the deeply personal encounters individuals have with something greater than themselves. James further describes religion as an interior experience, writing, “in the more personal branch of religion it is on the contrary the inner dispositions of man himself which form the centre of interest, his conscience, his deserts, his helplessness, his incompleteness” (Redick 235). Even though James distinguishes between inner religious experience and outward practice, he implies that spiritual moments are, in some sense, religious. This distinction is important because it helps explain how hikers enter the state of flow whether they define their experience as spiritual or religious. The repetitive rhythm of walking, immersion in nature, and simplicity of trail life create an environment where flow naturally occurs, allowing hikers to connect with themselves and their surroundings in a way that leads to deep personal transformation.

Last semester I attended an honors event about the legacy of religious women on the Camino de Santiago, presented by Sarah E. Owens. She explained that the Camino de Santiago is a pilgrimage trail in Spain that usually takes around thirty days or longer to complete. Many who finish the hike believe it brings atonement for sins, contributes to the healing of others, or offers personal healing. Through her research, Owens found that many pilgrims set out for spiritual reasons and felt a deep sense of belonging to the larger pilgrim community. This, too, is an example of flow, hikers on the Camino experience a state where distractions from daily life fade away, allowing them to be fully present. However, Redick takes this idea further, calling “kenotic walking…since no thoughts manifested in language while flow was happening, there is no immediate way to describe the moment by moment unfolding between the hiker and the place” (Redick 241). On the Camino, flow is not just about being present, it strips hikers of their past identity and places them in a state of openness, where transformation occurs but can only be fully articulated after the journey is complete. This sense of unknowing propels them forward, as they realize they will not fully understand their own transformation until they have completed the experience.

Both the AT and the Camino de Santiago serve as spaces where flow facilitates self-discovery. While hikers may set out with different reasons for walking, whether seeking adventure, healing from personal loss, or simply craving a break from modern life, they often find themselves changed in ways they did not expect. Some, like Popsicle, may believe they are simply there for fun, but by the end, they have undergone an inner shift that can only be described in religious or spiritual terms. Flow plays a crucial role in this process, allowing hikers to merge action and awareness in a way that reshapes their understanding of themselves and their place in the world. As physical effort gives way to mental clarity, the repetitive rhythm of walking becomes meditative, stripping away distractions and opening a space for profound introspection. In this state, hikers often experience moments of transcendence, where personal struggles dissolve into nature, and a deep sense of connection to the trail, to others, and to something greater emerges. 

This essay has explored the tension between spirituality and religion, showing how flow blurs the distinction between the two, ultimately merging them into a single transformative experience. The structured rituals of pilgrimage and the spirituality of long-distance hiking intertwine, revealing that the answers are not only found in churches, but in the rhythm of footsteps on the dirt and stone. Through flow, hikers come to see their journey not as a simple test of endurance, but as a path to self-revelation, a process of exegeting and rescripting their life-story in a way they could not have anticipated before taking the first step.