Thoughts for Slow Hikes

Step carefully, you don’t know what crawls beneath the needles. This is their home.

The trees extend in all directions as if they grew while completing their morning stretches, you must look. You have to stop. Your eyes rise and your mouth naturally falls open, partly due to gravity, partly because of awe. If you look up and continue on the trail, the trees will trip you with their roots, so you pause. The rays of light coming through the canopy are akin to the finest art.

Farther down the path a white spongy growth gives the mighty tree a shoulder or perhaps a shoulder pad for football or a blazer meant to make a small person bold. The mushroom has decided the side of this tree is the best place to plant roots and make a home.

The trees hug you as you tread on. The birds are singing from all directions. A crow lands on the tree above your head. You look up just in time to see him drop his bundle of twigs.

Around the next corner is a smaller trail leading off into the brush. Where does it go? After a few steps, you discover a bed of moss between towering trees, a perfect resting place for a weary deer.

The trail crosses a clear creek. You must detour to squat near the bank and hunt for animals. Tiny fish swim sporadically. Water bugs skip along the surface.

It’s time to return. But you stop. At your feet is a brown newt crossing the trail. You almost missed it. It’s little body copies the tree roots crisscrossing your path.

We called it a hike.

It was a wandering.

I only want slow hikes from now on.

I need time to discover.