Out Walking

I don't do well with inactivity. The stars finally aligned this evening and I was able to get out for a walk - a very BRISK three miles from home, down through Singer Creek Park, then over through Water Board Park, past the Armory, and home up Molalla Ave. Walked all that up and down in 1 hour, and came home with my face all red and breathing hard, but it felt so GOOD!


This is a map of my walk. If you click on it, you can see it enlarged.

A year ago last night I was camped on the Eagle Creek Trail with my 8-year-old grandson, Joshua. It was my first (almost) solo outing, the shakedown for my 50-mile hike later that summer.

That night in the tent I lay away and worried that The Big One (earthquake) would hit, and a tree would fall on the tent, and we'd be killed. Or the tree would just miss us, but the trail would be all messed up and we'd have to climb over trees to get out. And then we'd get to the High Bridge and it would be out from the earthquake and we'd be trapped. And my cell phone wouldn't do any good because we were so deep (3 miles in) up that canyon of the Columbia River Gorge, and there's no cell reception that far in. And even if I could call, it wouldn't do any good because Portland would be destroyed from the earthquake.

Sheesh! Not a restful night, but I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

It feels so good to move! To get out and pump the legs and arms and suck air into the lungs and feel that red river carrying the oxygen all through my body. This is what I was made for, to be walking the earth through my journey of life.

On the way up Molalla this evening, huge gray clouds everywhere, the threat of rain. (So what? If I got wet, I would just dry off when I got home. The rain can't go any deeper into me than my skin.)

And there on Molalla, with the cars whizzing by and the tacky businesses and weeds in the cracks, I looked up and there was a HUGE rainbow stretched out in front of me. It was the whole bow, the whole huge curve of it from one fir-covered horizon to the other.