Today’s poem is Walking Across Fire Island by Shelley Wong.

The Slowdown is currently taking a break. We’ll be back soon with new episodes from a new host. This week, we’re going back into the archive to revisit Ada Limón’s time as host. Today’s episode was originally released on April 6, 2022.

In this episode, former host Ada Limón writes… “I love to walk, when I’m healthy and mobile enough to walk, it’s one of my favorite things to do to recenter myself, or rather decenter myself. For me, it’s a solution to many things. When in doubt, hit the road, get out of yourself. Of course it doesn’t always work, and there were whole years where I was too sick with vertigo to properly go for a walk, but when it works, it really does work. You don’t have to have a plan. You don’t have to go fast or go slow. You don’t have to know the names of all the fauna and flora. You simply have to put your body into the world and something happens.”

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