Fireworks

I just couldn’t catch my stride today. Normally, I can get into a steady rhythm, and just roll along as the miles click past. That didn’t happen from the moment I left this morning.

I couldn’t figure it out. The terrain, though a little bit hillier than last week, wasn’t incredibly daunting. The weather was warm and muggy. What else is new? There was even a breeze that helped cool things down a little. I’d gotten a good night's sleep and had a good breakfast. I’d even had a great conversation with four new acquaintances before heading out.

I tried to go faster. I tried to go slower. I even had a stretch where I took quite a few sit down rest breaks, but nothing really helped.

At about the ten mile point as I was wracking my brain to figure out what was wrong, I suddenly realized that I was entirely focused on getting to the end of the day.

One of the many reasons I wanted to take this pilgrimage was to shrink my world to the one meter radius around me, and I was not following that guiding principal today.

Fortunately, I have some wise yogis in my life who have pointed out the tendency in all of us to fall into a laser like focus on the outcomes from time to time. Their advice is to fight this habit and work with your body and the Universe no matter what shows up in any given session.

I stopped for a moment and took a deep breath. If you can own your breath you can own life itself. I owe that piece of wisdom to these very same yogis. I thought back to what they might advise, and I knew to a person each one would suggest that I set an intention to guide my practice of walking.

I decided to focus my intention on taking in my surroundings and flowing along with whatever the Universe revealed.

I’d like to say that my gait became smoother and my stride fell in line, but it didn’t. Sometimes things just happen that way. I believe, in this case, it was the Universe’s way of encouraging me to slow down and be one with whatever showed up.

That part of the practice worked. I began to notice things like the proliferation of wildflowers growing just off the side of the road. I noticed that I was surrounded by hundreds of brown and orange butterflies, but there was not a single gnat in sight.

A few people have asked me how I was going to celebrate Independence Day, and I half-jokingly told them I was going for a walk. That is exactly what happened.

I noticed that the flowers reminded me of fireworks, or that fireworks remind me of flowers. Suddenly it dawned on me that I was seeing my own personal “fireworks” display all along the roadside.

Fireworks Along the Roadside - Linn County, IA

I hope you enjoyed a safe relaxing Independence Day. Make sure you don’t get caught up in thinking about destinations and outcomes too far out in the future. You might miss the fireworks unfolding right before your very eyes.

Happy 4th of July everyone!

Morning Person

I hope I don’t contradict a previous post, but I’m a little tired and I’ll beg forgiveness rather than do the research.

I’m going to share a secret that I’ve tried to keep hidden as far back as I can remember. My caginess with this particular piece of knowledge went so far that I even had myself fooled for quite awhile.

Morning Rainbow - Lowden, IA

I’m a morning person.

There, I’ve said it, and it feels good to finally get it out in the open.

I know that being a morning person is not necessarily a popular approach in our culture.  There are meme after meme after meme commenting on coffee or time or some other way to kick start the morning. There are mugs and shirts and hats and tee shirts all warning others not to approach until a person’s had time to get rolling.

I actually like the morning because that’s when I have the most energy. The day is fresh and young and with the passing of night, it seems imbued with almost limitless possibilities.

This is especially true at this point in the walk. Now I’m not gonna say that the morning is fresh and crisp. Mornings of late have been humid steamy affairs, but let’s face it….the temperatures and humidity aren’t going to get any more conducive to walking then they are in the morning. It reminds me a little of Navy Dive School in Panama City, FL where eighty-five degrees and sixty percent humidity at six thirty in the morning was as cool as it was going to get.

My legs and back are fresh, and the pack just doesn’t seem that heavy. The grips on my trek poles are dry and supple rather than slimy and slick with the afternoon palm sweat that’s just around the corner. Twenty or twenty-five miles doesn’t sound too difficult in the morning. That spring in your step that makes you believe this fallacy, but it will not survive very long as the sun makes its steady climb to its zenith. Still, in the morning anything seems possible.

Today, the thunderstorms that ushered in crashing rain and lightning that lit up the sky last night had passed. In their wake, as the sun peaked up over the eastern horizon, a full rainbow winked from the west. This morning, anything was possible. The rainbow was a sign from the Universe that the time to slog westward had arrived, and I’m grateful I was up and around to see it.