Outdoors, walking

Today, for the first time in two full weeks, I walked outdoors for a significant time, about a mile and a half from the top of the hill down Gibson to Hoopes and home, about forty-five minutes. Slow, and yet, ah! the marvel.

I looked and looked at all the colors of green and sky blue, and the rainbow of flowers, their tints, shades, textures. I breathed deeply the smell of growing, green, woodland things, the scents so intense I could taste them. Sensations flowed across my skin: a breeze here, sun heat there, cool, moist air by little creek rushing and splashing over rocks. Cicadias vibrated their particular, rhythmic, bone-penetrating hum, and here and there a bird still sang. A gold finch flew across the meadow like a sunstreak through shade. My steps dragged and my body trembled by the time I reached home, but joy filled my being. I felt so successful.

"If I'm stuck in a wheelchair, at least park me in the sunshine," I've said in the past. Better is to park me in the outdoors. Best is to not need a wheelchair, to move myself freely, to enjoy my embodied self, walking, part of the natural world.

Here in the country we can see stars, too, and many times I step outdoors in the dark just to gaze a little while, to breathe in the visible universe.

Here follows a writing I love that I very liberally transcribed from ideas in Anne McCaffrey and Todd McCaffrey's book Dragon's Time, Ballentine Books, NY, 2011, page 48:

The stars are beautiful tonight.
Even in darkness shines this light.

We are stars in the darkness.
We burn bright, beacons for others.
We cannot see our own lights,
We can only see the light of others.

We are reflective.
Our light lights others
As their light lights us.

While there are stars, there can never be darkness;
in the darkness, there is always light.