It always feels like a triumph when I check my steps on the iPhone at the end of the day and I’ve clocked the 6,000+ mark. It signals a fairly on-the-go kind of day, not a day pacing at the gym but enough to know it’s been a full one. Though in retrospect, there are only a few of those steps that really count. They’re the ones that take me around the circle of my immediate life and define a part of who I am. They measure and mark the well-worn tracks that I follow almost every day. They’re the steps that make up my 100-foot journey.

Being barefoot and barefaced is the way I connect with my world. I feel the seasons. My feet are imprinted on the earth. I’m a traveller, and my heart feels a kinship with so many places. Across beaches, at the shoreline of little islands, through pebble covered riverbeds and the ridges of jungle waterfalls, my feet have softened the paths of timeless wanderers and I feel their trace the world over.

Wherever we are in the world, there’s a journey of a hundred feet that defines our universe. For all the scope and vastness that our minds see and take us to, it’s really the proximity of the same 100 steps we take every day that defines our world. Within the confines of these steps we create, share, observe, live and love. And the people who cross that path or take some of the same 100 steps as we do, are the ones who share it with us.

Of all the steps we take in our life, whether to the edges of a landscape or the boundaries of our thoughts, there will be 100 we will look back on as the most remarkable we could tread. The few steps that carried us out of the door for the last time, or to a job that changed our life or across the worn carpet of an airport gate; they will signify the journey of a lifetime. They’ll mark the end and the beginning. Just 100 steps that changed and shifted everything.

We are all the culmination of the paths we walk. The steps that take us away from our destination or one step closer. Sometimes our journey is punctuated with indecision, with obligation, with what lies beyond our control but even if it’s in some small way, that journey must carry us towards the place we want to be. Within my 100 foot journey, there are a few steps that I take each day that are slowly carrying me towards my life as a photographer. Each day I step into a class to be challenged, guided and inspired. And when that journey is complete and I’m ready, I’ll begin my next 100-foot journey, as will we all.