Macx knew the first rule, "Never walk like you have a purpose." It wasn't just the motion of your legs, the swinging of your arms and the weight of your pack. Its the moment you are moving forward with scarcely any thought of what your limbs are doing. It becomes one of those fancy movie camera tricks, with the added benefit of feeling the air on your face and the drips from the branches above.
It was this frame of mind that he needed to be in. Not buried in the bustle of life, the chaos of intersecting needs and wants from random strangers. Walking without feeling the ground. Breathing without forcing in air.
Macx stopped by one of the larger trees. He had been walking for... well, it was hard to tell. He never brought anything to anchor him to the outside, just his senses and a walking stick and pack. The sun was lower, casting deep orange beams that were split and redistributed to fine photon-sized slits further in the distance. Nature's own physics experiment, except with hundreds of tree trunks and waving leaves.
Science in the woods, that would be something.
Macx imagined a large cyclotron, magnets ribbing each segment arcing out into the woods and beyond. The liquid nitrogen chilled cylinder suspended over a stream, propped by a crude rock bridge. Scientists wearing hiking boots and leaning on the gleaming chromed tube, worrying over the alignment of the beam inside, oblivious to the world around them.
But there was no science, other than the large feedback loops present in the forest, the bustling of leaves doing their quantum trick, teasing light into nutrients. It would be like someone conjuring gold out of thin air, Macx thought. Just a wave of the hand and "presto!". Macx hopped back as the imaginary pile of gold bars hit the leaves, scattering them in his mind.
Another direction then, this is all looking a bit familiar.
Macx closed his eyes and turned slowly. Not a dizzy spin to a random vector, but more of a careful tuning to invisible lines of force. Some joked with him when he did this, but Macx knew it was part of the secret. Be open and receptive, he thought. You can't go somewhere new if you don't let yourself be guided by outside influence.
Yes, this is it.
Macx strode forward, hiking stick picking out small divots in the loose soil, layered like peeling wallpaper in an abandoned house, with leaves and smaller bits of bark, splinters of wood. He knew that his wandering was doing an essential good, the pits from the stick turning into homes for insects, gathering rain water for those living on the forest floor. He imagined the circle of good insect friends gathering and chatting. "Isn't it wonderful we have such a thing!", while preening antennae and folding translucent wings.
Macx shook his head, climbing over a fallen tree trunk. If only it was that easy.
The sun was lower now, making its final transit below the horizon. Everything seemed larger now, emphasized shadows arcing out in impossible geometry, low rolling fog cresting the far edges as the temperature dropped. Macx adjusted his rain hat, and sat down on a nearby stump.
Here. This feels right.
He stopped and listened. Simply taking in the sound, the absence of sound and all of the other faint echoes through time. It was here, the locus. This was where it should be. Macx dropped his pack, rain pattering on the slick surface, rolling off in quicksilver drops. He felt the energy building. That prickly sense on the back of his neck, the fine hair on his forearms.
It shot through straight from his feet to the top of his skull, head pulled back, mouth open to the rain.
"We.... are.... here...."
There was so much to learn.