The tulips in the vase on my coffee table are open wide, embracing the sunlight pouring in through the windows. Their stems bend and twist as they strain towards it; they almost look like they could crawl right out, or their leaves turn into wings that send them flying out into the sunlit bliss. “Freedom! Springtime! Let us out!” They seem to say.
Or perhaps that is just my inner native, screaming at me to get my behind off the couch and go enjoy the beautiful day while it lasts.
So, restlessness converted into resolve and action, my running shoes are on, the hair is up, and out I go! No hamster-wheel of a treadmill for me today, the gym can wait for the next rainy day, because this one is for going places!
The air is alive: I can smell earth and cut grass, hear the birds, and feel spring bursting forth all around me. Yes, this is the kind of day I was looking forward to, when I wrote of spring on a windy day not very long ago.
The air is crisp, but once I have been walking awhile it is just perfect, enough to cool me when I break into a run. This is better than my summertime runs, when I feel the sunburn starting and the roadsides are knee-high with weeds.
I pass cows working on their fourth lunch, people mowing their lawns, and drivers whooshing past me as they return from work. Ha! I am not stuck inside a car, I am out here where things are alive… I walk by barbed-wire fences alongside the road surrounded thickly by briars, where blackbirds “chirk” and “ttreee” inside, and flutter out to sit along the wires and watch me pass by.
I am getting close to my destination, and the promise of it urges me to run more often and walk quickly when I rest. I am excited to have made it this far, for last time I came without the aid of a motor vehicle, it was with a bicycle, and my knees were not happy with the abuse. They are doing pretty good today, though, so I think my workouts on the treadmill are helping.
I turn the corner and head down the road that leads toward trees and water…I can smell the water now, and the sounds of humans are growing more faint. There are houses here too, but hidden more discreetly down long driveways and back amongst the trees. I can pretend that they do not exist much more easily now, and as I look at the thick tangles of underbrush that surround the trees, the forest resting in its authentic wildness, my mind wanders to thoughts of Native Americans, and then to Thoreau. For someone who likes to write poetry, I realize, I sure haven’t read much of it, but I do vaguely remember an American literature book I was forced to read, and Thoreau was a guy who found much inspiration in nature and wrote about God and wilderness a lot; I like that, so I should go rediscover him.
I am running down the hill now, and arrive out of breath but exhilarated at the small nature/historical preserve. There are two people with their dog already there, but they are far enough away that we can politely ignore one another. A short time is all I have, so I walk down to the water, smell the saltiness, hear the shorebirds calling, breathe in the freshness, and take in the view. The mountains are partially hidden by some clouds, but the rest of the sky feels open again, and swallows dart back and forth way up in the vast blueness of it. Lucky birds!
It is time to go…I aim to be home by five o’ clock, and I know I’ve got about a mile and a half to walk back again.
This time, I walk on the other side of the road, following the small creek I heard rushing downhill to the tidelands. I follow it up the hill and next to the road, thinking how this stream may have been here, running with the rainy seasons, before this strip of asphalt was ever laid. Or maybe it came into existence because the road was made, and thus a drainage ditch, but the ditch has become something more beautiful here…it is music to my ears. I think of all the people at the gym, plugged into their iPods, missing all of this. Sure, at the gym you want to tune other folks out for a while, pretend that you are somewhere else. For me, this is the somewhere else to be, where simple things make the exercise the means to an adventure, and not the ends. The music of this creek is peaceful, healing, pure. I look up, and see a hawk with a snowy breast and brown spots land in a tree; further on, something rustles in the brush. The road meets again with the highway, and I leave the forest behind.
The way back is a bit easier, more downhill. I follow more roadside streams, some little more than a trickle, some stagnant and green, with snake grass growing up out of the water. People in their cars rush past, and I keep running, the breezes rushing around me and into me, I feel the rhythms of my feet and my breathing and life around me.
I wish you could have been there with me, for words are two dimensional. I can describe the sounds, the smells, the experience, and in that way perhaps you may have walked it again with me just now, but these words are still only a shadow of the reality they represent. Sure, it was just a walk, with many random thoughts inspired along the way, but definitely a worthwhile way to spend part of an afternoon.
I am home, writing now, and it is dark outside. The tulips are closed, their source of happiness gone until tomorrow perhaps. But me, I am still happy, because today I felt free and alive. Walk again with me another day, there will be more inspiration, I am sure of it!
Or perhaps that is just my inner native, screaming at me to get my behind off the couch and go enjoy the beautiful day while it lasts.
So, restlessness converted into resolve and action, my running shoes are on, the hair is up, and out I go! No hamster-wheel of a treadmill for me today, the gym can wait for the next rainy day, because this one is for going places!
The air is alive: I can smell earth and cut grass, hear the birds, and feel spring bursting forth all around me. Yes, this is the kind of day I was looking forward to, when I wrote of spring on a windy day not very long ago.
The air is crisp, but once I have been walking awhile it is just perfect, enough to cool me when I break into a run. This is better than my summertime runs, when I feel the sunburn starting and the roadsides are knee-high with weeds.
I pass cows working on their fourth lunch, people mowing their lawns, and drivers whooshing past me as they return from work. Ha! I am not stuck inside a car, I am out here where things are alive… I walk by barbed-wire fences alongside the road surrounded thickly by briars, where blackbirds “chirk” and “ttreee” inside, and flutter out to sit along the wires and watch me pass by.
I am getting close to my destination, and the promise of it urges me to run more often and walk quickly when I rest. I am excited to have made it this far, for last time I came without the aid of a motor vehicle, it was with a bicycle, and my knees were not happy with the abuse. They are doing pretty good today, though, so I think my workouts on the treadmill are helping.
I turn the corner and head down the road that leads toward trees and water…I can smell the water now, and the sounds of humans are growing more faint. There are houses here too, but hidden more discreetly down long driveways and back amongst the trees. I can pretend that they do not exist much more easily now, and as I look at the thick tangles of underbrush that surround the trees, the forest resting in its authentic wildness, my mind wanders to thoughts of Native Americans, and then to Thoreau. For someone who likes to write poetry, I realize, I sure haven’t read much of it, but I do vaguely remember an American literature book I was forced to read, and Thoreau was a guy who found much inspiration in nature and wrote about God and wilderness a lot; I like that, so I should go rediscover him.
I am running down the hill now, and arrive out of breath but exhilarated at the small nature/historical preserve. There are two people with their dog already there, but they are far enough away that we can politely ignore one another. A short time is all I have, so I walk down to the water, smell the saltiness, hear the shorebirds calling, breathe in the freshness, and take in the view. The mountains are partially hidden by some clouds, but the rest of the sky feels open again, and swallows dart back and forth way up in the vast blueness of it. Lucky birds!
It is time to go…I aim to be home by five o’ clock, and I know I’ve got about a mile and a half to walk back again.
This time, I walk on the other side of the road, following the small creek I heard rushing downhill to the tidelands. I follow it up the hill and next to the road, thinking how this stream may have been here, running with the rainy seasons, before this strip of asphalt was ever laid. Or maybe it came into existence because the road was made, and thus a drainage ditch, but the ditch has become something more beautiful here…it is music to my ears. I think of all the people at the gym, plugged into their iPods, missing all of this. Sure, at the gym you want to tune other folks out for a while, pretend that you are somewhere else. For me, this is the somewhere else to be, where simple things make the exercise the means to an adventure, and not the ends. The music of this creek is peaceful, healing, pure. I look up, and see a hawk with a snowy breast and brown spots land in a tree; further on, something rustles in the brush. The road meets again with the highway, and I leave the forest behind.
The way back is a bit easier, more downhill. I follow more roadside streams, some little more than a trickle, some stagnant and green, with snake grass growing up out of the water. People in their cars rush past, and I keep running, the breezes rushing around me and into me, I feel the rhythms of my feet and my breathing and life around me.
I wish you could have been there with me, for words are two dimensional. I can describe the sounds, the smells, the experience, and in that way perhaps you may have walked it again with me just now, but these words are still only a shadow of the reality they represent. Sure, it was just a walk, with many random thoughts inspired along the way, but definitely a worthwhile way to spend part of an afternoon.
I am home, writing now, and it is dark outside. The tulips are closed, their source of happiness gone until tomorrow perhaps. But me, I am still happy, because today I felt free and alive. Walk again with me another day, there will be more inspiration, I am sure of it!
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