Water Saudauskas: "The hardest step is out the front door"

In Pittsburgh, we stayed with former walkers Water Saudauskas and Indigo Raffel and held three gatherings with diverse and warm people. In the first gathering, one sweat leader named Johnny sang a sweat song for the group. I later spoke with Water about the walk and what he’s been doing since. “Highlights for me on the walk was gaining the ability after about a month to walk 18 miles and knowing that it was doable and easy, enabling me to become a migratory spiritual animal. Walking enabled me to enter the room of earth balancing where prior I was just knocking at the door, so that I could touch without any repercussions a wild rattlesnake. People we met thought we were doing things that they thought were impossible to them, but in talking with them they realized they could do it—it just takes practice. It is step by step, inch by inch. The hardest step is out the front door.”

Early in the morning during our stay, before dawn, Water left his house to visit a nearby park to “walk into the mystery of the forest.” Water added, “I don’t think I would have that gift without the walk. People use the word balance, to walk in balance, usually in books. I know in my guts and in the soles of my feet what that means because of the walk. I know that I can access it when I do walk.”

What are the highlights of Water’s life since the walk? “I held my father when he was dying so I received a vision that I hope I can manifest in my lifetime; sweating and working to humble myself for ten years with a Mexican-American Buddha-like Vietnam Vet named Luciano Perez; working with my emotionally devastated brother for the last 22 years in Pittsburgh. He’s a lot better because of that. Living in a transitional interracial neighborhood where walking and praying is a survival technique, not something that has an exercise value. It’s a way of living here to survive. In 2000, a mentally-ill African American man went on a killing spree, consciously killing three non-African American people and wounding two. To heal the torn interracial neighborhood, the churches two weeks later had a peace walk that drew 500 people to start to heal the wounds from this man on the community.

“On October 25th, 2001, I stood on Broadway looking into the smoldering hole of 911 praying with seven others that healing would go on. Through the walk and the spiritual discipline of Luciano Perez I had a sense of wonder and respect. The walk started me in arriving there, 17 years later.

“I’m almost 59 now. I don’t have a car, so I use my legs and ride buses. Walking helps me keep sane; that’s correlated to the walk. The walking grounds me so that I don’t put out the fear vibrations to the animals.”