I took a break from packing and cleaning to go for a walk along a favorite road that runs through the woods and ends at a lake I only discovered last fall.
It was warm and sunny, and the clouds looked like summer. The leaves are out, now, but not at their full span, and they’re still that fresh and hopeful green of beginnings.
I thought I might run, and I did. More than I walked, and far more than I expected. Everything felt fast and smooth and easy– as healthy as the all the green growing things.
The lake was beautiful– so much rich blue, so much worth-going-on-about green.
I arrived just as a family was taking their new-to-them motorboat out for the first time, and I offered to get a picture of them all together. “You’d think these kids didn’t have a mom, looking at photographs,” the woman said, “I’m always the one taking them.”
Another trailer backed in as soon as they’d left, and I had plenty left to do and couple miles to cover to reach the car, but it was worth it to stand on the dock for a brief and non-solitary moment, in the bright evening light with the air warm on my bare skin and the water inviting enough for a swim; to feel the presentness of my body alongside the memory of a night not long ago spent watching the uncanny army of satellites while the loons called through the darkness.
I turned and ran back, and I was at my car sooner than I wanted to be. That road once stretched so far I didn’t know if I wanted to walk it– and now a little familiarity has made it smaller– but also dearer.
Next time I run it, I’m jumping in.
Comments