Friday, December 14, 2012

Driven

I suppose there are those who would find time spent 
walking in the park an idyll they can ill afford...
  
By Patrick J. Walsh

A patchwork rain accompanies me on my walk this afternoon, dropping chilly little pin-pricks of pure cold water in my hair and across my cheeks and nose.

I am tired. As I push myself forward through the mist, I find myself wondering at some of the things that drive people in life, and some of the things that people strive toward, in these days that are so often so difficult to understand.

Although it presents no appreciable physical hindrance, the rain weighs heavily on my mood. The dampness conspires with the rapidly approaching darkness to disturb my peace and rattle my bones, as I shiver slightly after every few strides.

© Patrick J. Walsh
"...in the wideness of perspective that is a gift of this 
setting, it often seems that I am not walking alone."

I suppose there are those who would find time spent walking in the park an idyll they can ill afford at virtually any time of year — and least of all in these very short days of preparation and observation that mark the holiday season.

I try to find time to walk in the park even on the busiest days — even when the weather is against me, and the days are appallingly short, and the chill lays heavily on my steps.

Each day, my walk accumulates time and distance, but I seldom consider my daily hike in terms of the investment of minutes or miles.

In a similar way, each day’s sojourn requires both the effort to get to and from the site as well as that which I expend during the walk itself. And again, I pay little heed to the ‘commute’ required, by foot or by car, when calculating the costs and benefits of my daily exercise.

All this evaluation brings to mind my recent re-reading of Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden” (1854):

“I grew in those seasons like corn in the night, and they were far better than any work of the hands would have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but so much over and above my usual allowance.”

I am struggling as I near the end of my walk today. My breath is short and quicker than usual. My progress along the paved road is slow and labored.

The last upward slope before I complete my usual circuit seems somehow steeper than usual. The rain has begun to feel heavier, even though it has not, in reality, increased in intensity or volume.

My thinking has also come full-circle as I draw nearer to the lot where my car is parked. Pondering that which sometimes drives others — and that which drives me as well, in other circumstances — I come to some resolution about my inclination to walk in the park each day.

Memories of this place that I have known so long, and of the people who populate those memories, play an important role in the drive that brings me to the park again and again. And in the wideness of perspective that is a gift of this setting, it often seems that I am not walking alone.

In both the perspective and the experience, I find plenty of incentive to walk, regardless of the rain, or the cold, or the early darkness of the day.

© Patrick J. Walsh

 

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