Learning to Walk

Tufts of soft brown grass shoot through the mounds of snow as I trudge through  the deep on a wooded path made anew with white snow. For thirty years I've walked this wooded dirt road watching rain water carve into the earth, a pond disappear and one day running into the path of a coyote who wasn't frightened, but went to higher ground staring as we walked on.

My trainer says take different routes, try different workouts; you don't want to get bored. Yet, I walk the same path a few times a week, month after month. Some things remain the same. I find comfort and feel grounded in constancy day after day. However this path is a microcosm of static. Some days the waterfall is deafening whereas other days in the heat of the summer it is bone dry and with cold temperatures now within days it will be frozen and silent. I watch green ferns turn brown and wind blown trees once viable rot.

I walk this path reassured that there is an undercurrent of constancy in my life. I walk this path also knowing that change is a constant. Both notions fill me with hope.