Walking comes first
When I walked along Fall Creek yesterday, this is what I realized--AGAIN.
When I stop prioritizing walking and go down to one or two walks a week, I lose so much more than I expect to. I lose not only the experience of being outdoors, and the exercise, and the change of focus from my job. I lose the habit of walking, the expectation of walking, and even the desire to walk. I lose the confidence I had built up around walking safely and fast on slippery moss-covered rocks, across streams, on mud, and on slick wet leaves. I lose the habit of quickly finding my balance again.
I lose my eye for possible obstacles, so that I actually banged my thigh with a huge heavy branch by stepping on its end--it was so painful and unnecessary I had to laugh. Oh, and I lose the memory of what I should bring along when the weather is so changeable: there I was in a sleeveless camp shirt with a temperature of 14 C and a brisk wind chilling the sweat on my skin into a miserable sheath of ice.
All those skills will come back--but like language skills, if I neglect them they don’t sit there keeping in shape until I decide to take them out of cold storage again. They require a serious apology and some brisk chafing and plumping up again before they come back to life.
This is what I give up when I decide I am just so indispensable at work that I can’t walk. Idiot. I won’t do that again. Even if it’s raining, I’ll walk--all the more when it’s raining, since that’s the best way to keep able to walk on treacherous surfaces. Walking comes first.