Walk-thinking

I did more than double the distance walking today than I usually do. I've only done this route 6 times (and three times up the mountain slopes) - yet already it's not enough. Once I get going with determination, my body tends to kick in quickly and wants to up the stakes. It's happened already - and I'm pushing the "beyond" a bit more every day. I'm either going to be walking (running..!) a lot longer each day, or I'm going to have to start getting up really early.

Some days you start out walking to cure what ails you - and when you get home, you ain't cured at all. If anything, you may even end up worse off. But that's how some days go.. :-)

It's amazing what you find when you take back roads. I've lived here for years and years, but haven't been down a few roads in the area. Today I found another old Landy, many very cool dogs, and olive thrushes hiding in the undergrowth. I saw lopped-off pines with pigeons perched on high-up stumps. Acacia trees not natural to this area, their trunks coated in fever-forest greenage. I found a square 70's style house in need of a makeover for sale, and across the road a sold one that had been Tuscanized. If I could afford to, I'd buy the old house and give it a face-lift. But I know I will never have the cash for a house of my own - especially not in this area. Which is why my life options have moved on to non-home-ownership. Things I can achieve. Some might be disappointed or frustrated at an inability to have stuff - it's weird, but I'm not.

After the rain the world looks very different. The roads and paths are full of snails and tchongololos. Birds drink surruptitiously from dents in the tar. Silver-sparkle drops hang on every weed and overhead branch. Even if it's just a temporary reverting to winter's drifted rain, nature's been refreshed.

As much as fresh air is good - car fumes are not. Walking after work takes one through rush-hour, along a couple of busy intersections. I may have to replot the route to find a less toxic option.

Why do I keep putting off setting aside a specific time each day to meditate? It's always appealed to me, I've felt the need to spend that silent still time for years - and yet I never seem to get around to it. Perhaps it's the reality of living with dogs and a child, noisy neighbours - there's little quiet space in which to be motionless without distraction. Yet I need to find it. Perhaps in the early hours of the day, perhaps late at night. It may take exiting the immediate environment and distancing myself from the things that draw my attention. Or it may just take a whole lot more concentration to block out the noises around me and be still in spite of them.

Or is walking my moving meditation?

I've come to enjoy this time-out every day after work. I like walking on my own where no-one requires my conversation, or thinks me weird because of how I power-breathe up the hills, or asks me to conform to their pace. It's a time to unwind and detach from whatever may have happened in the day. I know now why my dad used to insist on walking home after preaching at church each week.. :-) And why he still walks and runs every day. There's a rhythm that sets in, cutting out the clutter in your head and draining the tightness from your shoulders.

I could become addicted.