Walking the same path, backwards and forwards, again and again, day after day, in doing this one gets to know the path. It doesn’t matter where it is: a city street full of cars and businesses, a suburban wasteland of scraps of grass and rough dirt, wherever we walk we build up a pattern of that place within us, and it becomes familiar. The distance recedes, becoming shorter the more we know it; walking somewhere unknown, things always seem longer.
I’ve just moved house, you see, and am finding it fascinating, this learning of a new path to town. After just a few times, it’s solidifying in me, and the shapes of the trees that I pass are becoming known.