Child's Play

A wet, cloudy morning.  Who cares? Get outside!

Run like a child!  Remember how it was when your body moved to respond to the joy you felt without thinking about it.  As an older adult, ahem, I do have to think about it a bit.  Where I place my feet while trail running is a lot more important than it was when I was a child running in a field or pastureland on the farm where I grew up.  But let that joy well up in you again.  Get back in touch with that child in your heart and look around you.  See the beauty.  Feel the amazement of a body that can mobilize your enjoyment of the world in person.  Let go of some of your rules on scheduling and training.  Call it a fartlek or fun run.  Whatever.  But go out and have fun.  Stop and take pictures along the way.  Bend and examine moss cozying up with tree roots and think to yourself how that is an amazing work of art.  

 

See the mouth on the "fish" above.  It's open and ready to swallow food.  And below, the "fish" has an eye top right where the leaf starts to curve downward. Ive' named these the Great Spotted Fish Leaves. 

Flowers are blooming.  I found them on the edge of the woods.  I was surprised.  Charmed.  I bent to examine them.  The run will continue.  Why not take the moment to enjoy life to the fullest.  Everything else can wait for now. 

As I trotted about I remembered a quote that I've seen attributed to Golda Meir but also much older, a proverb attributed to gypsy societies, "The dog that trots about finds the bone."  I love that because as I've been free to roam North America the last several years, I experience many things.  I see wonderment everywhere in nature.  Beauty tucked away in small places you'd miss if you weren't out there trotting about, moseying around, putzing here and there, wandering.  

Above, a little pond in a wetlands area.  Below, a toppled tree seen from below.  Now tell me. How many times have you seen the bottom part of a tree?  Really.  Think about it.  Of all the trees you've seen in your life, have you thought about what they look like from below?  Where here is your opportunity.  This one is a bit vintage.  I think it looks like a whacky dark star.  I think it is a beautiful sculpture. 

And below is the water.  Reflections of the trees in a marshy area.  In this area barred owls talk back and forth about what meals they may be cooking.  Woodpeckers move up and down the trunks of trees and out onto limbs, jackhammering when they find a good spot. Turtles are starting to emerge from the muck. Frogs to be frogs and make that rubberband sound that amuses me in addition to the croaking sound we associate with them. Or better yet, the mating sounds that we first thought were ducks quacking.  The first time we heard it we headed toward the pond where the sound was emanating. When we arrived there was nothing there...or so we thought.  But then we started to notice frogs.  How cool we thought.  But what happened to all the ducks that had been here?  We'd not seen them flush.  So after a bit we walked on.  Then we again heard the duck quacks starting up.  An uproar of quackers.  So we returned slowly quietly, staying just far enough away to look in.  And that's when we realized they were frogs. Dozens. Hundreds.  And we saw them mating.  Sorry, but it was funny.  Weird.  Cute.  Frog sex.  Frog reproduction.  Why is that a taboo thing?  It is not.  It is life happening.  The carrying on of nature into the future.  We loved it.  It is one of my favorite wildlife memories.  I have that treasured memory from trotting about.  Adventuring myself.  

So this run was just about 6 miles all told.  I picked up some "road kill" on my way back from the trail run part of my journey.  One item was a faded yellow plastic basket that was small enough and light enough for me to carry it home as I jogged along the highway.  Another was a partly eaten dog toy apparently dropped from a dog's mouth out a car window.  It was the remainder of a fuzzy green cloth tyrannosaurus, I think.  The head was torn off.  I picked up the tyrannosaurus thinking I'd wash it, of course, then maybe harvest the green fuzzy part for a miniature fabric art project I want to do where I create a fiber image inspired by one of my nature photos.  So the picture of the moss and tree roots above in this post is what I want to duplicate.  As for the yellow plastic basket, I picked it up partly because it was garbage that needed to be recycled one way or another: either through official home waste recycling or recycled into another life of use.  I thought I could wash it and use it in my kitchen cupboards for storing my juicing accoutrement.  But as I ran home carrying that basket, it began to crack here and there, it was so brittle from the sun and time.  But hey, even though I carried it a couple miles home, it became a great way to later transport the wet, nasty headless green tyrannosaurus dog toy that I hope to upcycle into a work of art. 

Life is good.  Go for a run.  Run like a child.  Don't compete with anyone.  Don't even compete with yourself.  Don't train.  Just run.  Have fun.  Sightsee.  Look about.  Explore.  Be you.  The you you could be.