Fresh Air, Fresh Mind!

Benedicamus Domino!

It has been shown in various studies that walking, especially out of doors, can improve thinking and clarify decision-making. There's something about the steady rhythm of the feet that calms the brain's activity and makes it flow more naturally. I do not walk out very often, though I certainly can do this any time I wish to, and I love doing it when I am in the midst of it. However, something always seems to prevent me from venturing out, and it's nothing more than simple enertia. Why go out when you can stay in?

The real question should be: why stay in when you can go out? While it's true that I must put up with an urban landscape with cars roaring past and people everywhere, there is still something calming and uplifting to be engaging in the flow of life. It is true that walking in the woods or along a country road or through a meadow might be more to my liking, but there's not much I can do about that on a daily basis.

I remember when I stayed with my sister in BC for two months. We used to take her dog out on weekends to different woods or beaches. (She lived in Victoria, so there were lots of these on the island.) There is a real energy to be found in these spots of natural beauty, especially where there are lots of trees. For some reason, the sighing of wind through trees is one of the most soothing sounds to my mind, next only to waves breaking on a sandy or rocky beach.

But even in the city there is natural life going on. Birds build nests and seek food. Bugs fly and crawl and inch their way through life. There are ways to seek the forest behind the bricks and morter, and I intend to do this more regularly than I have of late.

I recall a perfect evening stroll I took once. It was just after a rather hard rain, and I took my dog--not the guide dog I have now but a little pet dog that we had--out for a walk. There was a storm-sewer near our house and it was flowing strongly with runoff from the rain, and it sounded just like a stream flowing. I stood a while and listened to it, and I thought that it was the sweetest sound I had ever heard, because it was spring and the water was now flowing where there had once been snow. Even in the city, I found a tiny speck of nature, a tiny proof that life on this earth was not all barren streets and grit and dust, and this was from the simple sound of water flowing through a man-made pipe.

I want to learn to feel the weather, to determine what the world is doing. I want to learn to feel the rhythms of life under my very feet. It may be a fallen world, but it is God's gift to us, and I must learn to live in it as an active participant rather than as merely a spectator, and one way in which I can do this is to engage in physical activities which force me to be outside in the open air and not merely spend my life indoors. I pray that this plan is successful, and that I can spend some time each day looking for the green beneath the grime.

Deo Gratias!