Lookey Lous

Frequently, I do the required daily kilometer around a lake. It is a small lake by many standards and is in the middle of  a growing city. The path goes in and out amongst woodsy copses, lawned playgrounds and into swamps with board walks. It's a shallow lake that ducks and geese and other more uncommon birds, along with turtles, swim about on, raise their young beside and feed in. Fortunately, the well-meaning onlookers have mostly stopped dishing out killer bread scraps and now sanely and sensibly watch as the fauna feed naturally. While I do the circuit, I do not ever run. If I ran, I would miss the surprising event of yellow iris hidden among the reeds or the heron standing stock-still like he was painted on the water or the turtles like knots on a log, sunning themselves in the morning warmth. While I don't stroll, but walk rather smartly, I can still hear the bird song without scaring them with thumping running shoes or loudly panting breathing. I have time to look over the board railing into the waters of the boggy places and perhaps catch a frog climbing up a stem or a butterfly flitting through the branches of the willows or being charmed by little blue Forget Me Nots, Buttercups or Bleeding Hearts peeking through the tall grasses. Running is a good thing for the heart perhaps -but it does little for the spirit. From what I can tell from the moans as these souls huff past me with their ears full of electronics or worse, telephones, they get nothing from this pathway other than a place to clod rapidly along before entering their menu of daily stresses. Sure, running is good but why clog up natural pathways when there are gyms and tracks for that sort of stuff. The worst offenders of the pathway's morning peace are the persons who talk into their phones yakking inane tripe and gossip for all who are forced to hear and who would rather listen to a chain saw than the personal rants of the rude and ridiculous. But that's a gripe that I have with any hand held pain in the knee. I own some of these things but there are times and places to use them and they are private, but that's another topic for another day. At the end of the lake walk, I am refreshed physically and my mind is clear and ready for whatever the day brings. It is so easy to slow down and smell the grasses, hear the bird song and sense the wonders of natural growth all around. Better still, is what our Grade One teachers used to spout: stop, look and listen.