Step Step Swat

I tend to need some type of daily walk, much like a dog, to feel complete. It doesn't matter if it is around town, in the woods, along a dusty back road - just put me on a path and let me go. Without it, I feel antsy and caged in, wandering around the house or work not able to focus on one particular task at hand. My dog is a good excuse to find a way to fit it in each day, though really it is almost a meditative practice for me. I like to look at the businesses or wide expanses of fields, notice overgrown weeds or feel the cool forest air on my skin. It is true, however, that some walks are far better than others. The hike that I was fortunate to take yesterday fell into this category of "better."

It is a path that follows a creek offshoot of a larger river. The river itself is pock marked with signs that warn of DANGER and things about rising waters and strong currents and sirens, but the creek is a small trickle of a thing, broken up by bitty waterfalls and little wading pools. It is simply idyllic. After a first try at navigating this portion of the trail, stumbling along a sort of beach with sucking mud and spider lairs, we finally found the well-trodden path through the woods. Different from most other trails I am used to, this one had surprising flora like bamboo patches, purple hydrangeas, jungle-like palms and vines. It also had gnats. LOTS of gnats. I developed a pattern to my walking: step, step, swat, step, step, swat. There was something satisfying about the amount of bugs I was able to make contact with on my forearms that merely brushed them away from my face for the length of two steps. My sweet little old lady Mennonite friend would likely see this as a good way of incorporating arm exercise into the overall leg and cardio workout. She is ever-positive.

There was no real destination in mind except the waterfalls that happened to be along the way. It was too cold to actually get up close and personal with them, but we did wind up splashing a bit in the shallower water. The rocks were mostly covered with scrubby moss, and they bordered each pool as if they had been perfectly designed lagoons. They clouds eventually gave way to a few moments of sun, and the light that came through the canopy of trees was warm and made the whole landscape into a speckled piece of heaven. It got me to wondering if there are bugs in the afterlife. If there are, I hope they are the more fun ones, like butterflies and inchworms. And those little water skimmers.

Just next to one of the wading pools was a bounty of berries. We were fooling around, posing for pictures, and when I looked off into the distance for one shot, I exclaimed at the spray of raspberries just ten feet away. We raced to the bush, each of us claiming all of the berries for ourselves, and proceeded to eat handfuls of them. I picked them off one by one. I filled up my palm with little mounds of them. I must have eaten ten dollars worth of raspberries that were free for the taking in this little wonderland. I hadn't thought that I could ever have enough berries, but when my mouth started to pucker, I knew that was my saturation point. It reminded me of a poem:

Millions of Strawberries

Genevieve Tagged

 

Marcia and I went over the curve,
Eating our way down
Jewels of strawberries we didn't deserve,
Eating our way down.
Till our hands were sticky, and our lips painted,
And over us the hot day fainted,
And we saw snakes,
And got scratched, and a lust overcame us for the red
unmatched
Small buds of berries, till we lay down--
Eating out way down-- and rolled in the berries like two
little dogs
Rolled
In the late gold
And gnats hummed
And it was cold
And home we went, home without a berry,
Painted red and brown
Eating out way down.

It was a tiring, wonderful day.