A spiritual journey on the move: When travel becomes a quest for the soul, transcending the ordinary

While some have sacred spaces to pray, I have a special place to think. Prayer or reflection can happen anywhere, but certain places—by their design or essence—encourage deeper contemplation.

For me, my secular sanctuary is San Francisco’s Ocean Beach, located at the city’s western edge, past Golden Gate Park, where the horizon meets sea and sky, and it’s accessible at the end of the city’s undulating N Judah MUNI line.

It’s here that I often return to clear my mind, explore philosophical thoughts, and ponder life’s meaning. Walking along the wide, three-and-a-half mile stretch of beach is my preferred space for deep reflection.

Just as sacred spaces like churches, synagogues, and mosques are designed to foster worship and reflection, natural locations also have the power to focus the mind and evoke awe. There’s something almost mystical about these places—how they interact with light, shift your perspective, or envelop you in beauty that feels otherworldly.

What began as a simple New Year’s resolution to watch the sunset once a month in San Francisco has since evolved into a ritual, and now, even though I no longer live there, it has become a pilgrimage.

My tradition starts at Java Beach coffee shop, located across from the Great Highway and the ocean. I savor a coffee and pastry while journaling, watching the sun begin its descent behind the dunes, before crossing the street to find a spot in the sand.

Watching the sun sink into the Pacific is a guaranteed peak experience, a moment of pure fulfillment, in the way the renowned psychologist Abraham Maslow would describe it.

In those fleeting moments, the boundary between self and the experience fades away, leaving only the sunset. For a short time, I am not an observer of the sunset—I am simply immersed in it. Once I snap out of the reverie, I begin my mindwalk.

A meditative walk

The connection between thinking and walking traces its origins to Ancient Greece, where the Sophists would wander and lecture in the thriving marketplace of ideas. Aristotle’s Peripatetic school took its name from the colonnade, or walking path (peripatos), of his university, and it’s believed that Aristotle himself often taught while strolling.

The names of great thinkers who used walking to stimulate their thoughts are familiar to anyone who’s studied philosophy – which I once did.

Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Ludwig Wittgenstein all walked to think. Thomas Hobbes even had an inkwell built into his walking stick for jotting down ideas. Søren Kierkegaard wrote about Copenhagen’s Philosopher’s Way, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel walked Heidelberg’s Philosophenweg, and Immanuel Kant took daily strolls past Königsberg’s Philosophen-damm.

In Rebecca Solnit’s “Wanderlust: A History of Walking,” a book I read during a series of walks through Central Park, years after I began my Ocean Beach ritual, she includes a chapter on Jean-Jacques Rousseau titled “The Mind at Three Miles an Hour.” Rousseau explored the link between walking and philosophizing, viewing walking not just as a mode of transportation but as a deliberate cultural act.

“Never have I thought so deeply … as in the journeys I’ve made alone, on foot,” Rousseau wrote in his autobiography “Confessions.” “There’s something about walking that stimulates and energizes my thoughts … my body must be in motion for my mind to start moving.” One of his final works was titled “Reveries of a Solitary Walker.”

For my Ocean Beach walks, which I still do whenever I return to my old home, I select a topic beforehand. Sometimes it’s a philosophical question, like “Can happiness be achieved simply by choosing to be happy?” or “Is religion more than just ethics and ritual?”

More often, I’ve grappled with questions about how to live my life. The most transformative decision I made on that beach was whether to follow my girlfriend, whom I had been dating for only a few months, to Bangkok for a fellowship. I knew I had to go, so I asked her, and she said yes. We’ve been married for 19 years now. On my most recent walk, I worked through a resolution concerning our teenage daughter.

The Latin phrase solvitur ambulando, “many things are solved by walking,” captures the essence of it. There’s an Inuit tradition where you walk off your anger, continuing until the emotion dissipates. You then mark the spot as a physical marker of the feeling’s intensity. I recognize the healing power of such walk therapy.

This is the place I’ve been searching for

For me, it’s not just about the walking—it’s the place itself. Ocean Beach, a timeless stretch from the Cliff House in the north to the San Francisco Zoo in the south, is the perfect setting for this personal, secular pilgrimage.

It’s a dreamlike landscape at dusk, with the sky mirroring itself in the water. Add in the constant crash of waves, the breeze, and the fleeting nature of my own footprints, and it feels like I’m walking through a Zen Beat poem. I sometimes lose my thoughts in the gray sea or the vast clouds, but I stay, walking, until I arrive at some clarity or resolution.

With San Francisco’s weather often hovering in a perpetual fall-like chill, Ocean Beach remains largely empty. Except for surfers clad in thick 7-millimeter wetsuits, few brave the freezing waters beyond ankle-deep. In the quieter stretches, dog walkers and the occasional jogger roam, while only the sandpipers—too busy evading the waves—are around to overhear your inner monologue.

Occasionally, you’ll find small groups gathered to watch the sunset—couples wrapped in Indian blankets, or neo-hippies organizing impromptu bonfires. Tall dunes separate the beach from the silent, commercial-free boardwalk and the distant hum of highway traffic.

In recent years, the dunes have slowly encroached on the road, effectively cutting off a large section from car traffic. Near the edge of Golden Gate Park, a wild maze of Monterey cypress and other trees create a canopy, framed by two windmill ruins. It doesn’t feel like you’re in the city at all.

Perhaps psychogeography, a budding field of study, offers an explanation for why this place affects me differently than others. The meeting of land and sea feels like the end of the world and the beginning of something new—like standing at the edge before taking a leap, a literal line drawn in the sand.

Under the vast sky and invigorating weather, everything seems possible and open to contemplation in places like this. It reminds us to stay humble and grateful when travel uncovers places that speak to us so powerfully that simply walking through them transforms us for the better.