walking path · ix · returns to itself
The circular walk is, by intention and by survey, exactly two miles, and ends where it began. It loops the building's grounds in a wide ellipse: across the lower lawn, around the kitchen garden, along the lane, over the stile, by the seven oaks, down the long meadow, past the orchard, and back to the kitchen door from which it started. It is the walk one takes when one wishes to walk a walk and not be elsewhere afterwards.
Walkers see, from this path: most of what the grounds offer, in summary; each of the named paths from outside; the building from every cardinal direction; their own footprints, faint, an hour later. The walk is favoured by guests, by convalescents, by those who wish to think about something and to bring it back unchanged, and by the dawn walkers on slow Sundays.
It connects, by joining, with every other walk in the grounds: orchard, river, seven oaks, winter (in season). It does not connect, by intention, with the world beyond. The walker, having walked it, has been nowhere and somewhere. The circle itself is older than the walk that traces it.