Antonia Malchik
on the Healing Power of Walking
“Let’s go for a walk!”
When was the last time you said this to someone, genuinely, without having a destination in mind?
Just like Thich Nhat Hanh said: “Take my hand. We will walk. We will only walk. We will enjoy our walk without thinking of arriving anywhere.”
When Antonia Malchik feels sad or confused, there is nothing that helps more than getting outside: “A walk in a forest, a night under the stars, sitting by a river or stream, even putting my bare feet on the grass will help. A long walk makes all the difference in the world. A walk doesn’t always give an answer, but it can always be an answer itself.” Her family heritage combined with her deep curiosity gave Antonia a desire to discover and write about the world around her.
Antonia Malchik is a book author and freelance writer and copy editor who has written essays and articles for a variety of publications. Her first book, A Walking Life: Reclaiming our Health and our Freedom one Step at a Time, discusses the past and future of walking’s role in our shared humanity. A warm exploration of the healing power of walking - this fundamental element to our being - about how we disconnected from it and the need to reembrace it.
The simple act of walking can contribute to building long-lasting communities, good mental health, and physical well-being. However, as Antonia writes, “We’re spending more time sedentary and alone than we ever have before. If bipedal walking is truly what makes our species human, what does it mean that we are designing walking right out of our lives?” She asks simple, yet highly essential questions: How did we lose the right to walk, and what implications does that have for the future of democracy and the obvious loneliness of individual lives?
Be mindful of the “loss of walking”, as it has the potential to destroy spiritual connections and freedom.
Dive into Antonia Malchik’s book for a rich selection of research on the history, science, culture, and philosophy about our innate desire to put one foot in front of the other and the joy we feel when we embrace our “keep on walking” sensation.
We can change the course of our mobility – and we have to, right here, right now.
Thank you, Antonia, for being a Mindful Walker!
#INSPIRATORS QUESTIONNAIRE
Name: Antonia Malchik
Company / Institution: Freelance
Title: Writer and Copy Editor
Website: www.antoniamalchik.com
LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/antoniamalchik/
Country of origin: United States
Country you currently live in: United States
Your personal definition of Regeneration: A way of living that ensures current and future generations of all life live with clean, free-flowing rivers, that they breathe unpolluted air, that they can wander the world unchecked by borders or “No Trespassing” signs, that they are ensured food and shelter and care and are free to relate to one another and the world around them. That they are cared for and are able to care for all in return.
Main business challenge you face: Protecting my time. I’ve worked as a freelance copy editor and writer for over two decades. Many people seem to have a psychological barrier to understanding that someone who works from home and determines her own hours - especially if that person is a parent (I have two children) isn’t just available for their needs or company or to volunteer at any time of day.
It always surprises me what a constant challenge it is to remind people that I have actual jobs, and a challenge to remind myself that I can and should protect that work time rather than shaping it around everyone else’s needs. It can actually be very frustrating.
Main driver that keeps you going: I’m very stubborn. And I love this world so much. I want everyone to be able to love it in ways that are restorative to them and to the non-human world.
My paternal grandparents spent most of their lives in the Soviet Union - my grandfather never saw the end of it, and my grandmother died in 1992, shortly after the Iron Curtain came down - and yet the way they lived, with integrity and sorrow and despair and laughter and refusing to compromise their values in a system that demanded it, constantly gives me strength. If I can be that even for one person in a generation I haven’t yet seen, that’s worth fighting for.
The trait you are most proud of in yourself: The word “proud” makes me step back a bit, which I’ll have to think about more. But “self-respect” I can work with, or simply traits I’ve learned to value. I work hard and am intensely curious about just about everything and everyone. I love hearing people’s stories. And whenever I find myself lost or without direction in the world, I’m able to steer by kindness, compassion, and honesty. Or at least I try! I guess being able to hang onto those things—for the most part—when life has gotten hard is something I value in myself.
The trait you most value in others: Kindness, compassion, and honesty!
I never met my Russian grandfather. My father left the Soviet Union in 1974 and lived in exile until 1990; his father died before he was able to ever see him again, and only met my Russian grandmother twice when I was 14 and 15 years old. But I’ve heard many stories about them, especially about their shared commitment to honesty and integrity no matter what the world threw at them.
These people raised children under Stalin, were persecuted for decades for being ethnically Jewish, and survived the Siege of Leningrad. There are stories about their refusal to compromise honesty or to sacrifice others for their own safety in circumstances so terrifying I feel frozen sometimes just thinking about them. But they refused to surrender those values even when survival seemed to demand it of them. It’s something for me to live up to, and to value in others.
Passions & little things that bring you joy: I love hiking, skiing, hunting, foraging, working in my garden, camping under the stars and seeing the moonrise somewhere where there’s no light pollution. Sitting by a river or some fast-flowing creek high in the mountains. Walking for hours for no reason. Watching a rainstorm move over the prairie. I wish everyone could spend time doing those things.
The #inspirators who determined you to take the regenerative path:
Stan Rushworth
Dahr Jamail
Sherry Mitchell
Sherri Spelic
Dina Gilio-Whitaker
Riane Eisler
Jesse Desrosier
This list is probably endless, to be honest. Every time I feel like I need direction or determination, I look for writing or an interview or something to remind me that I want to be part of building a better world for all to live in. That the paradigm we’re living in is destructive, not regenerative, and that none of us who wants to change that is alone.
A hint or starting point for companies or professionals that are taking the first steps in the regeneration journey: One thing that I’ve been thinking about a lot is prioritizing the question: “Who is being asked to sacrifice for this, and do they have a choice in the matter?”
That goes for human and non-human communities. When talking about energy production of any kind, for example, the proposals tend to be huge. Really big projects with big impacts. Too often, environmental justice is seen as its own sacrifice, a “nice to have” that’s not really practical, and affected communities are never given a choice. I don’t find that acceptable—too often, people and other life aren’t really given a choice, or at best a very limited one.
What if with everything you consider doing, you ask affected communities to take the lead? What if ecological wholeness and connectivity were also a top priority?
If those two things aren’t true of what you’re doing, is it really regenerative?
Most used and abused clichés about sustainability that bother you: Greenwashing is an obvious answer, but for me, anything that insists on economic growth - including “sustainable” growth - or that we don’t need to change the very foundation of extractive capitalism, are signs that a person or company isn’t serious about wanting to see change.
An honest piece of advice for young people who lose hope:
Hope is hard for me.
I grew up in a very abusive home. I can’t remember a day without violence and fear. I also can’t remember a day with hope - hope that things would change or some other family would take me away. What I did have was fight. I refused to believe that this was the way things were meant to be, that it was in any way right. It wasn’t. I could only fight back with words and refusal to comply, so that’s what I did. I think I’ve carried that with me: the fight. Though in a different form. A refusal to accept what I know to be unjust, including for future generations.
Hope doesn’t come to me often, but determination does, and combined with the guiding examples of my grandparents’ compassion and integrity, it gives me something like hope.
At the same time, if I’m despairing too much, there is nothing that helps more than getting outside. A walk in a forest, a night under the stars, sitting by a river or stream -even putting my bare feet on the grass will help. If I can’t get to much nature, a long walk makes all the difference in the world. It keeps depression from “gelling,” from settling in for the long haul.
A walk doesn’t always give an answer, but it can always be an answer in itself.
Books that had a major impact on you:
Our History Is the Future by Nick Estes
Becoming Kin by Patty Krawec
The Unwomanly Face of War by Svetlana Alexeivitch
In the Courts of the Conqueror: The 10 Worst Indian Law Cases Ever Decided by Walter R. Echo-Hawk
Nurturing Our Humanity by Riane Eisler
Anishinaabe Ways of Knowing and Being by Lawrence W. Gross
Progress & Poverty by Henry George
We Are the Middle of Forever edited by Stan Rushworth and Dahr Jamail
Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden by Camille T. Dungy
Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
Perma Red by Debra Magpie Earling
Must-reads for any Regenerative professional:
Cannibal Capitalism by Nancy Fraser
Our History Is the Future by Nick Estes
An Irritable Métis Substack newsletter by Chris La Tray
The Land We Share by Erik T. Freyfogle
Fresh Banana Leaves by Jessica Hernandez
Border & Rule by Harsha Walia
Doughnut Economics by Kate Raworth
Movies / Documentaries you would watch all over again:
I’m in the middle of watching The Expanse TV series again. I really love science fiction, in particular for the ways in which it can help us think about how we can live together, or how it gives perspective on current modes of being and living.
In The Expanse (which is also a book series), Mars is populated and governs itself, and the asteroid belt is populated. In the Belt, both people and resources are heavily exploited by Earth and Mars. It’s a different way of seeing how colonialism, extractive capitalism, and oppression work, as well as how powerful authorities control people when water and air are scarce. The TV series ended before finishing the narrative arc of the books, and I hope someone finishes that someday because there’s an overarching aspect of what kinds of life you disturb—and what the consequences might be—when you’re pursuing big energy extraction projects without caring about being regenerative and reciprocal.
This isn’t a movie or documentary, but I like the Murderbot science fiction series, by Martha Wells, for similar reasons. They’re great, fun stories, but they also present acute questions about how a “person” is defined and who gets to control that definition, as well as what a world looks like when it’s completely controlled by corporate powers.
I also really like the documentaries Angry Inuk and People of a Feather, which take a close look at the difference between commodification and control of a community’s own livelihood (as opposed to simply subsistence), as well as how massive projects like hydropower dams can destroy ways of life far downstream.
I’ve watched the movie Don’t Look Up I think 11 times. I love how the ending is really the lesson many of us need to learn whether the world is ending or not. All our worlds end eventually—we all die. So what’s really important? That scene where a group of characters just spend their remaining hours cooking and eating an incredible meal together is an answer to that question. I liked how they used brief snippets of what look like David Attenborough-style nature videos throughout the movie. To me, they brought home the miraculousness and variety and beauty of life on this planet even more strongly than a full-length nature movie can.
Blogs / Websites / Podcasts etc. you visit frequently:
An Irritable Métis, Substack newsletter by Chris La Tray (this is the only newsletter I probably read every single one of)
High Country News magazine
Aeon magazine
I listen to too many podcasts, so I’ll select a few: Building Local Power, Farmerama, Frontiers of Commoning, In Common, Planet Critical, Last Born in the Wilderness, Reframing Rural, Stories for Action, Untangled Roots, The War on Cars, Pondercast, Threshold.
Music that makes you (and your heart) sing: You can call me a Swiftie; I really like Taylor Swift!
Also Blackbraid, Forndom, Wardruna, Faun, Heilung, Nine Inch Nails, Metallica, Enya, Queen, and I do most of my writing and editing to a Spotify playlist called FLOW curated by Icelandic composer Ólafur Arnalds.
That’s in cold weather. Montana doesn’t have a lot of warm months, but when they’re here I just have the window open and listen to the birds!
Places you travelled to that left a mark on you: I lived in the Soviet Union when I was 14 and 15. It wasn’t for long but it probably changed me forever.
I went to Hawai’i once and have never been anywhere like that, an utterly different world from my own that left me spellbound. I met an octopus there and she probably fundamentally changed me, too. But after living overseas and on the U.S.’s east coast and elsewhere for 20 years, I’ve been back in Montana, where I was born and raised, for almost a decade now and want to leave less and less frequently. There are places here that live deeper within me every year. I want to learn better how to give back to this place that has made me.
Global Regenerative Voices you recommend us to follow:
Nick Estes
Sherry Mitchell
Tyson Yunkaporta
Harsha Walia
Riane Eisler
Rune Hjarnø Rasmussen
Trends in Regeneration we should keep an eye on: Changing models of private landownership and rights granted in private property regimes, and anyone and any organization working to reinvigorate ancient models of the commons and shared resource management. For example, Frontiers of Commoning had an interview with Konda Mason about cooperatively-run community land trusts as a way to secure farmland for BIPOC farmers through her founding of an organization called Jubilee Justice.
The Land Back movement. Until the dominant culture in North America starts reckoning with the reality of stolen land and broken treaties, it will remain a broken culture. Land Back is an incredible opportunity to begin thinking about these relations differently and to begin facing that history. So many of the injustices in this culture are founded on stolen land. And, once you begin to see that, you can begin looking into how thefts also happened in countries and cultures in Europe, as well. Enclosures of the commons looked different and had different effects but they fundamentally came from the same mindset of ownership that says, “I took it; now it’s mine.”
Best places for business networking (online or offline): Good question!
I probably don’t do networking, or maybe not enough. I don’t have any social media, but end up talking with a lot of interesting people who’ve read my Substack (titled On the Commons).
I’d say get involved in your community. Forget about the business aspect—that might follow but what you want is to be in a place in which everyone can thrive. That has to be a place where everyone is welcome, where housing is affordable, and where hard times show the resilience of social capital and cooperative care, rather than the brittleness of individualism. If your business is place-based where you are, it can’t help but be involved in that. I personally serve on a city bike and pedestrian committee and the Board of Parks, and stay involved with school board and public school issues. I don’t know if it’s networking, but it’s certainly living.
Events we should attend: I’m presenting at the Reclaiming the Commons conference in Portland, Oregon, this July (2023) and it looks incredible. The roster of presenters is mind-boggling and there will be so much to learn.
There is a conference in Syracuse, New York, on “The Religious Origins of White Supremacy: Johnson v. M’Intosh and the Doctrine of Christian Discovery.” Understanding the 1823 U.S. Supreme Court Johnson v. M’Intosh case, its role in spreading the Doctrine of Discovery worldwide, and how this approach to land theft and land ownership underpins so many of our current injustices is, I think, absolutely vital to changing them. The people organizing this conference, with the Indigenous Values Initiative, have done a tremendous amount of work to spread understanding of the Doctrine of Discovery, and to repair its damage. I won’t be attending that conference because I’m trying to avoid flying as much as possible, but would love to hear from people who do attend.
And anything local to you. Dig into your community. Find out who’s there and what they’re already doing. Can you contribute? Can you learn?
Associations, business clubs, tribes you belong to – and why:
I might still belong to a couple of writing organizations like the National Association of Science Writers, but I think I let all those memberships lapse. Otherwise, probably none. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like to. Maybe I just haven’t found the right place.
I contribute labour to some conservation organizations in my local area that work to preserve habitat and keep rivers clean. And on LinkedIn, I’m part of the Global Walkability Correspondents Network, whose leaders and members do great work on walkability worldwide.
Sustainable Development or Regeneration courses, trainings, or certifications that really teach us how to have an impact: That’s probably not one I can answer! I’ve done a training here and there, like Jeremy Lent’s course on the Web of Meaning.
I’ve met interesting people, but realized that what helps my work most is reading or listening to the work of others who know more, and finding people who are doing the actual work in their actual places, including where I live. That’s what most interests me.
I did a year-long advocacy training with Artemis Sportswomen a couple of years ago, and it culminated in a weekend project replacing barbed wire fencing with pronghorn-friendly wire. I like doing work and getting my hands dirty, so if you do, too, I suggest something like that!
Reasons to feel optimistic about our future in 2030: I dropped all social media a few years ago and don’t read or listen to any regular news except my local paper and some state news. That doesn’t mean I avoid important events; they always find their way to me pretty quickly. But what this practice means is that I can give time and attention to entirely different things, like people working on mutual aid, or work on building commons systems of resource governance, or abolition work—all kinds of things.
This is something I learned researching my book on walking, that there are people, a lot of people, doing the daily, on-the-ground work of building a regenerative world and restorative communities all over the place. It’s just that most of us don’t give our attention to them, and don’t hear about them because most of what we hear is filtered through a massive corporate media environment. But this work is being done and you can find it.
Following these kinds of people gives me something beyond optimism. It gives me strength.
Reasons to feel pessimistic about our future in 2030: I could go too deep into this, unfortunately. Octavia Butler’s science fiction book Parable of the Sower terrified me, it’s an incredibly good book because it was, and is, almost the only book I’ve read that understands how social fabric can unravel along with ecological collapse.
Hyper-individualism leads to a brittle society, and many things over the past several years, including the pandemic, have demonstrated that this belief in “you have to save and support yourself and your family or clique and abandon everyone else” runs deeper than I wanted to believe. Too many people’s inability to even imagine collective care is what makes me pessimistic.
Regenerative Leadership qualities much needed today: True leadership. I wish I could say exactly what that looks like but it’s so rare to see it. Doing what’s good for the whole, not yourself or your political friends or only people who are like-minded. Being honest, being willing to talk about the massive and deep change that’s needed for the sake of all life. I liked what Patty Krawec said in the #inspirators interview with you about leaders who prioritize horizontal structures. That seems really key.
Quote that inspires you:
“Deep human connection still cannot move faster than the rate at which trust can grow.”
(Robert Moor, On Trails)
We need trust in our lives, in our societies.
I wrote about loneliness and community quite a bit in A Walking Life, and in the years since then, trust’s role in shaping them has only proven itself to be more important. Being part of a group that hates others for whatever reason, or wants to control and dominate both nature and other people, can provide a superficial level of trust; but being part of a group and connected to people who are moved by love, care, compassion, and kindness? Who manage to care for one another and work together even when times are challenging or disagreements arise? That kind of trust takes time, but it roots itself deep and wide.
Your own quote that will inspire us:
