Morning Walk

Day 90: I do not like walking along the highway. I stopped taking a daily constitutional two years ago after three close encounters with careless drivers, but now my favourite places to hike are inaccessible for one reason or another (closed down, full of ticks, too far to drive, too many people), so I've become desperate. I don't go far. Half a mile up, half a mile back in 15 minutes, putting a good, solid definition to "brisk" in my book. This has to be squeezed in while the Mischievous Monster is having a cat nap as well, hence the time constraint. This morning's jog-trot was brisk in another sense: chilly, and with a wintry zephyr breezing me along. I thought I was going to beat the masses of land plunderers hauling their ATVs on trailers behind outsized trucks, but I only made it halfway before they began streaming up the highway, blowing gravel into my face. My appreciation of Nature's beauty was somewhat marred by their callous disregard for it, emphasized by a verge littered with beer cans and other trash. It is a mind-set I cannot begin to comprehend, and one which I firmly believe has in part led us to the current state of affairs. Let this, then, be my protest: a brief snapshot of a better world. It's still possible, if we can incline ourselves to care.