After my 16-year-old son Justin died, I learned that some journeys can only be made on foot, and grieving is one of them. You can't fly across it to avoid touching down in the pain. You can't cruise through it by car and watch the landscape through a half-open window. You can't swim through the stormy tide of emotions because you'll most surely drown if you don't keep yourself grounded in practical reality.

Grieving is a step-by-step journey. Some stretches of the road are rougher than others. But every step is important. Every step has its gifts.

One of the things that helped me stay grounded in my journey was my walking routine. I lived at the top of Schooley's Mountain in the foothills of the Poconos -- not a very big mountain, but challenging to walk. Picking out a three- to four-mile stretch to hike each day brought me a great deal of healing.

When I was feeling gloomy and depressed, spending time in the beauty of nature seemed to brighten my mood. The physical exertion recharged my batteries. If my mind was racing with anxiety, moving my body always seemed to calm me down and put things in perspective. Walking became a kind of moving meditation, and I sometimes experienced moments of great clarity and insight while sprinting up a steep hill or sauntering along a forest trail.

Sometimes I couldn't wait to get home to write down an idea that came to me while walking. It happened often enough that I started carrying paper and pen in my fanny pack so I could capture the thoughts as they flowed.

It has often been said that the sky is darkest just before dawn, and it was sometimes during my walks that dawn broke for me. Just when I thought I'd hit rock bottom, I'd lace up my walking shoes and hit the trails, only to encounter a moment of amazing transcendence along the way.

During a particularly dark patch, just after returning from a trip to visit my dad as he battled the colon cancer that ultimately took his life, I was feeling overwhelmed with my troubles and broken by failure. My son had recently died, I was dead broke, my home was in foreclosure and I was struggling to find my way through the grief and worry that were piling up in my life.

One morning I woke up determined to take my power back. I had just seen the movie, Forest Gump, in which the title character dealt with his broken heart by running across the United States. Inspired, I headed out for another walk on Schooley's Mountain.

The sun was already hot and it felt good as I approached the lake. A beautiful red cardinal was perched on a fence post near my path as if to greet me. I immediately thought of Justin, as I always do when I see a cardinal or a butterfly, and I said a mental hello.

As I started across the wooden bridge that crosses the lake, I saw something that filled me with wonder and curiosity. The surface of the water was covered with something white. Looking closer, I realized that there were thousands of tiny white feathers softly poised on the surface of the lake!

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