Sacred Encounters

This chapter advances walking as a way of knowing within ecological autoethnography, framing movement through landscape as a rigorous, embodied methodology. Knowledge emerges through encounter, where body, memory, and environment participate in mutual conversation. Walking becomes a dialogical and interpretive practice that cultivates attentiveness to place and to the more-than-human world. Grounded in phenomenological traditions, the chapter challenges disembodied research paradigms and redefines inquiry as relational and participatory. Through sustained presence and sensory engagement, narrative identity is reshaped in dialogue with living systems.