The power of walking

I was just chatting with some people in the MCS chatroom who wanted to know about my move...which was nice...but then, I thought, I want to write in my blog while I still have energy, so I decided to do that... Talk about obsessive, I either have nothing to do and am bored, or have too many things I want to do, and stress myself out figuring out which one I should do, by which time I'm too stressed out to do anything! Sheesh! There are too many endless permutations of, well, anything for the human brain to consider, at least this human brain.

Okay, I want to write about walking. Or at least I told myself I wanted to write about that when I was taking a walk today. Course, I seem to have lost the inspiration. The problem with PLANNING anything is that the more you plan it, the more stress you put on yourself to do it, the less you're able to do it; spontaneous writing is usually better than planned writing, but what can you do.

So. Walking. Walking is invigorating. And peaceful. And stimulating. The routine of going the same way every time is comforting. Seeing the same sights, in the same order, making the same movements and turns and so on to get to a certain place. I like that very much. My walk that I have been doing in Liberty, since there is basically nowhere to walk in this town (A, it's small, and B, it's almost all uphill, oh and C most of it is crowded and filled with auto exhaust or people), so I found a path that is almost all flat, not crowded, and, well, exists, which is always a good thing, when something exists. (Gee, that is the best I can say about my walking path in Liberty? "It exists." Well, could be worse. What if there was no place to walk at all?)

Anyway, so, when I leave the house, I usually go down the hill and descend into the town (the hill is so steep, that's what it feels like - descending - it feels so ceremonial, almost). I cross the street before the gas station to avoid the gas station smell and into the Great American parking lot; walk a bit more down the path; and unfortunately have to cross again because they're doing construction at the police station; so it's like a game of Hocus Pocus, walking down this road lately. A little bit further on, I cross once again to get back to the side where the natural food store is and where the path to the cemetary is. (The street's not very big though, so it's not really hard to cross, makes it more interesting). Since we got snow, I can't take the path that goes directly from the NF store, so I take the side street across from Family Dollar. When you get to Locascio's, you can walk across the parking lot there (instead of going up the hill as I had done before), which leads directly to a huge parking lot (for what I have not yet figured out, it's always empty, but a lot of nice open space to walk in) and leads to the graveyard. The graveyard is the only place to walk in this town. Or was, anyway, before it snowed. Now I have to satisfy myself with walking TO the graveyard instead of walking IN it. That walk takes somewhere between 10-15 minutes, I haven't timed it exactly yet; usually I end up walking about half an hour by the time I get back.

If you want to walk further there is Cold Springs Road but it is so depressing and desolate, nothing but gritty sidewalks, cars screaming by, used car dealership after used car dealership..... I don't like to walk there, but it is, at least, flat.

The graveyard was great to walk in before the snow. It is huge and on a big hill, with like six different levels of paths; even has stairs and benches throughout; beautiful and peaceful with a really pretty view of Liberty - the ONLY part of Liberty that can be called pretty - the first few weeks, I would spend an hour walking around it daily.

And no, it's not creepy to walk in a graveyard if you don't look at the graves. :)

But our lovely pre-Thanksgiving snow dashed that, oh well.

Today, when I was walking, I saw some very cute kittens in someone's yard. One was orange and adorable and came over to me. The other was a calico. That made me smile.

Then, when I walked past some abandoned building on Main St, I saw, of all things, a picture of a MENORAH AND DREIDEL in the window. I don't know how I could have missed that before. I've seen the "Happy Holidays" illustration with the Christmas tree, but I hadn't noticed the Hanukkah stuff before. Someone just did it with - I don't know what - kind of in a grafitti fashion.
But it made me feel good. Especially because I had been wondering earlier if Liberty had a town Christmas tree, and if they did, if they would have a menorah, too, like Portland does. And feeling jealous if they had one without the other, and what do I do but walk by a Hanukkah decoration. ("There are Jews in this place!") Coming from a very non-Jewish place, I always love to see any instance in which Judaism is evident or remembered. And whoever did it, did a VERY good drawing of a dreidel. It even had one of the symbols on it - not sure which ones.

So, I came back from my walk glad to have some external stimulation and to have seen two things worth commenting on.

That is what life is made up, after all - small wonders, small pleasures, that we have to gather and hoard to get us through until we can get to the bigger ones.

Some time I'll have to give you a walking tour of Liberty.... (it won't take very long! ha).