Rest

I went for a walk today, near noon, in a park just beyond the city's ring road.  It was spectacular.

Putting one foot in front of the other always is, to start.  Ambulation is pretty startlingly terrific.  As babies, we crave it as soon as we see it, and immediately throw all our small selves into the act of getting from one place to another.  Both of my children dragged themselves across the floor on their bellies for swathes of their infancy.  Movement by any means necessary.  I was sympathetic.  And though I often forget that every strike of my soles against the dirt is its own firework, I shouldn't.

But also the time: an hour before the apex of the day. A weekday no less, most people shuttling through the Rube Goldberg of the American work routine.  And it was hot– high summer in Missouri is not for the faint of heart.  Sweat under my ears and down the back of my neck, dripping across my collarbone, collecting in the creases of my elbows and knees.  Cicadas hummed in the oaks.  A meek breeze teased the smells of pollen and horse manure, loam and and blacktop.

 The park wasn't empty- deep in suburbia, this particular park never is.  But there were only a few humans straggling along the trails, trailing dogs or children or both.  And so I felt that particular freedom I always feel when I manage to slip the boundaries of routine, as if I've punched a hole in the sky, only to realize it's made of paper.  I feel lucky.  And clever.  But mostly just lucky.

I am.