Take more time, cover less ground.
Thomas Merton
One thing about growing older is that a consolation prize for a weakening body is that I’m — whether I like it or not — forced to move along at a slower gait.
Instead of trudging up the hill behind the house, head down, non-stop, in a hurry to get to the top as I would have done ten years ago, my lungs now cause me to pause, catch my breath a third of the way up, then half way up, then again and again. I never make it.
Not because I “couldn’t” make it, but the view “sort of” near the 2/3 mark (who’s counting?) is so breathtaking I have to stop.
The distant horizon hints at the vast curvature of the beautiful round ball we call Earth.
Standing there at the cliff edge looking down at the forest below — a forest never logged or disturbed by humans — brings home to me the exquisite nature that is my home.
Glancing up, Wedge Island is aptly wedged between a she-oak, the horizon and the cliff face.
Growing older into mindfulness is not a bad thing. One’s perspective on life certainly changes.
And it is not only a perspective of the “larger view”.
Looking down at my feet, I see the miniature beauty in the thrusting red, lacy tipped native cranberry bush.
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