These Knees Were Made For Walking

Today starts my eighth week since leaving Bynum. It’s been….an adventure. The learning curve was sharp but I now feel like everything is settling into a routine. Any kinks that come up should not be so hard to manage now that I have had some practice with them.

A lot of my expectations have changed with real world experience. I was approaching this, in part, as if it were a job. I would get to the place where I could walk 40 hours a week. And I mapped out everything based on that. Then I realized “I’m retired. I Do Not want to go back to work”. And my body said: “You’re old. And you Do Not want to go back to work.” So…there goes that map.

So I am drawing another one. I realized is that there are things to see and hear and feel and taste and smell. While looking a paper maps I did not imagine what the trail would look like; what the roads would feel like; that I would see little towns with stores and churches and graveyards. What a surprise that was. Smell the fires in the campgrounds. Hear the birds in the morning and evening. Realize that they get quiet during the day. These things should not have been a surprise but I have not done that much traveling in my life. A few places here and there but not enough to think about the obvious. I worked and went home. I visited my family in Washington once in a while. And I worked and went home. But I also lived my community. I participated in community events. Planned some of them. I got to know the people of Bynum and the wider area of Chatham county and that is now where my roots are planted. I don’t have many regrets in those decisions. But now I want to see some of the world.

I don’t know whether to call things plans or expectations or goals. I just know that all of those things have changed. I am still walking but it is unlikely that I will walk the whole path to La Push, Washington. I certainly won’t be walking 40 hours a week. And it won’t be a contiguous path from Rehoboth to La Push. I have already missed a couple of hundred miles just on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal tow path and the Great Allegheny Passage.

I do want to slow down. See what I am going through. Take a closer look at the graveyards and towns and churches. Talk to some of the people that live and work there. Notice the smaller things like all the wild flowers that are growing along the rivers and paths. Maybe count all the turtles I see. Or, maybe, just the different kinds of turtles because I have already seen too many to count. And listen to the birds.