Tuesday, January 3, 2012

A Walk or a Safari

Walking around the ranch or down a country road is one of my greatest delights. I’m always escorted by our dog Bodie and usually accompanied by Hubby and/or the goaties. Walking isn’t just a discipline of exercise; on the contrary, it’s a gift to myself: the gift of wide-open spaces, sunshine, serenity, and get-up-and-go.

This year, I’m especially grateful for my walks because last winter I was on crutches with a painful knee injury. If I wear light knee supports and use my trekking poles, I can now whiz down the road as fast as I used to—what a joy! But since slips, trips, and stumbles can aggravate the old injury, I’ve developed the habit of studying the ground instead of looking up and around me.

Hubby, on the other hand, never misses nature’s version of Good Morning America: the new snowfall making the mountains jump into the sky, the mule deer bucks hiding in the greasewood, the harriers and red-tail hawks patrolling the fields for mice, the bald eagle regally surveying her kingdom from her throne in the old cottonwood. Hubby sees what I don’t (until he points it out to me) because he looks for it.

If you’re a walker and are ever in our neck of the woods—er, desert—you’re welcome to join me. If you’re a walker and nature photographer, you might want to wait for Hubby!

“What, what would have become of me had I not believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living?” PSALM 27:13
                                                                         Snow dunes. (By Zach Lentsch)




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