Monday, January 7, 2013

It's the Little Things

I have off of work every Monday and Friday.  Every day off, I tell myself that I will get some exercise that day, because I have the time.  Today, I decided that I would walk to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription.

I find I cannot "just take a walk" without some destination in mind, unless I have a walking companion. When I have tried to do that, I find myself constantly looking at my watch and my internal conversation goes something like this: "OK. I have been walking for five minutes.  If I turn around now, it will be a ten minute walk."  I guess I would rather talk to someone else than to myself!

So, off I go to the pharmacy.  It is a little bit more than a mile to get there.  A decent walk for a January day.  I am bundled up in my down jacket.  A scarf around my neck, a hat on my head, long johns under my jeans and a hoodie underneath my coat, just in case the wind is coming from the wrong direction.

It has been a bit of a snowy winter so far this year.  We had a blizzard on the 21st of December, with a bonus two more inches the week following Christmas.  Because of this, there is snow and ice everywhere.  I begin to wonder if a walk with snow covered or icy patches are not unexpected, and a bit chancy.  But, as I walk, I see something along the edges of the snow and ice.

Do you remember those little patches of ice, that if you step on them, crunch deliciously to the pavement?  I do!  I loved them, and always had to race ahead of my sisters on our walks to school so that I could be the one to have that pleasure!  Well, as I watched the places that I stepped along my route, I began to see them.  To one with untrained eyes, I had now become a drunkard, weaving along the sidewalk, trying to reenact that childhood pleasure!  Finding these delightful little bubbles of ice along my way has become my quest.

My musings about this walk down memory lane bring me home along a different street so that I can find the bubble ice there!  It has become clear to me that children do not walk to school anymore.  Or they do not find the fun in those ice bubbles.

It really is all about the little things.  Walks are not so bad after all!

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