Welcome to Contemplative Walking
(Formerly Where Insight Meets Earth.)
You already walk. To the train, with the dog, through the park on Sunday. What is missing is not the walking. It is a way of walking that connects you with the natural world around you.
Most of us were never taught one. We were taught to exercise outdoors or to meditate indoors, and the space in between, where a walk becomes a spiritual practice, remained empty. The result is a life spent moving through the living world without ever quite meeting it.
Contemplative Walking is the practice that fills that space. You walk slowly, and in silence, and instead of directing attention inward to your breath or your thoughts, you give it outward, to the living world around you. Attention settles on a single being that somehow catches you, such as this oak, this crow, or this stream you have passed a hundred times, and you stay with it long enough for the walk to become an encounter. I have tested this practice across six Camino de Santiago pilgrimages and hundreds of miles of ordinary sidewalks, and I teach it here one practice at a time.
Each Monday, one walking practice arrives in your inbox. Use it that week, on whatever ground you have, in whatever time you have. Over months, the practices accumulate into something no single walk can deliver: a felt belonging to the living world.
If your walks already feel like they should mean more than they do, this publication was written for you.
What You Will Find Here
Walking practices you can use this week, whether you have 15 minutes or an unhurried afternoon.
Ecospirituality rooted in relationship, rather than guilt or despair.
Seasonal reflections following the Celtic wheel of the year.
Pilgrimage writing from multiple walks on France’s ancient Le Puy route of the Camino de Santiago.
What you may be missing, even if you already know all of this matters, is the felt experience of belonging to the Earth, the kind that comes through walking, attention, time, and connection. That is what we practice here.
Is This For You?
My readers tend to be people who feel the losses of the natural world more than those around them, and who want a quiet place to be in relationship with the Earth rather than only worried about her.
Many arrive with a spiritual practice already in hand, one that turns inward, and sense that the living world cannot be reached from where they currently practice. Some are professionals looking for grounded presence. Some walked a Camino, came home, and want to keep what opened in them alive on an ordinary Tuesday. Many simply suspect that a direct connection with the Earth might help more than another app, article, or discussion.
This is contemplative depth for people who need silence to connect.
Why I Started This
I walked my first Camino de Santiago pilgrimage as a bucket-list item, expecting answers to the challenges of modern life. I found questions instead, and a practice that changed how I move through the world.
After six pilgrimages, first in Spain and then along France's ancient Le Puy route, I realized that what I was learning did not belong only to me. The Earth is struggling. People are overwhelmed. The old ways of connecting, through silence, through walking, through kinship with the more-than-human world, are needed now more than ever. All of this is within reach.
For years this publication was called Where Insight Meets Earth. The name changed because the practice deepened in me and I wanted to name it clearly. The writing, the practices, and the path remain the same, and every older link still works.
About Me
I am Jeffrey Keefer, an ordained Wild Guide, a Chaplain at New York University, and a Professor of research methodology with a PhD in Educational Research.
I have walked the Camino de Santiago six times, mostly along the ancient Le Puy route through rural France. That walking shapes most of what I write here.
At Cherry Hill Seminary, I developed and now teach the Rewilding the Soul Ecospirituality Certificate, a year-long journey into Earth kinship through contemplative practice. The September 2026 Contemplative Walking Retreat I am leading on the Le Puy Camino is full. Future retreats will be announced here.
Start Here
New to Contemplative Walking? These writings will give you a sense of what we explore together:
Why Subscribe?
Every post arrives directly in your inbox, ad-free and algorithm-free, every Monday.
You will join a community of people who ask similar questions, wrestle with complexity, and deepen into Earth kinship together. We are fellow seekers on this path.
Free Subscribers receive every post I publish, full archive access, and the ability to comment.
Paid Annual Subscribers receive every post I publish, full archive access, and the ability to comment. They also receive Pack Light, Walk Present: The Contemplative Camino Packing Guide, along with an invitation to a free one-on-one Camino Packing & Planning Audit. They also have my gratitude for keeping this writing open and accessible to all.
Hit reply to any email. I read and respond to every message.
