Encountering clockwise

I occasionally get my day’s walk in by circling a track at the local high school, and like most I walk there counterclockwise.

Because we walkers are all going in the same direction, we usually encounter each other in passing, literally.  We are passing or being passed or keeping equal distance.

On occasion, in the quiet, I am greeted by a passing walker’s faceless “g’d m’r’ng” and that’s that.

If I hear the footfall behind me, I anticipate a fleeting greeting but it doesn’t always come. If the walker is light-footed, the words can be surprising, even startling.

In any case, we forge on.

Recently, however, I decided to experiment by walking clockwise around the track, which has eight lanes.

What a difference. I could see my fellow walkers approaching as they could see me. There was time to prepare for greetings, unfailingly shared, particularly if we were in nearby lanes. Coming from different directions, we smiled. Sometimes it was perfunctory, sometimes sincere.

We knew we’d meet each other again in a lap’s time. On those re-encounters we could even share mock grimaces of exhaustion. If we wanted solitude, we could move apart in the lanes we chose.

The other day, one woman signaled that she was about to stop and we struck up a  brief conversation that turned on our exercise routines. How often, how far, how long. The basics. There was a chance we might meet again, particularly—but only if — she was walking counter to my clockwise.

If we had been going in the same direction — in agreement as it were — we would never have "countered," or encountered.

Gifts on a spring walk

Taking a walk in the hills above my house this afternoon, I seemed particularly attuned to signs of good deeds. Perhaps I was inspired by the spring-like day and nature’s own budding gifts.

Why should human beings be any exception as natural gift givers?

The first sign was a fairly decent looking T-shirt carefully draped over a bollard in Council Crest Park. It was on prominent display just in case the owner came back looking for it.

Then, leaving the park, I passed a water fountain (a gift from the parks bureau, I assume). On a chain at its base, a neighbor had attached a metal bowl intended for dogs to slurp from after romp in the park. A nice gesture.

Along Fairmount Boulevard, someone left a stylish pair of reading glasses on the spur of a telephone pole. Again, the finder had hoped the owner might recover the glasses on a return jaunt.

Not much farther down the windy road, I encountered an elderly man picking up litter. He grasped an abandoned plastic bottle and packet of peanuts. He even dumped the peanuts on the edge of the road. “For the squirrels,” he explained after I thanked him for helping keep the roadway clean.

Finally, I got my turn.

A young woman in a pick-up truck slowed to ask directions to West Linn. No small task because West Linn is about 15 miles to the south. She had been visiting a friend in the hills and was utterly lost.

“Believe me, it happens here,” I said.

“My GPS isn’t working,” she said pointing to her smart phone, suddenly made stupid by the hilly terrain.

So I gave her directions from the still functional global positioning device in my head and sent her on her way.

Afterwards I worried briefly whether technological assistance is replacing face-to-face help, keeping us in a cocoon of isolation.

But I decided not to let the thought bother me. Why let technology intrude on the streak of human gifts my walk had given me?

Walking in the Moment

One of the joys of settling into a community is knowing enough people to recognize and greet them on my walks. And on this 10,000 Steps program,I’ve been doing a lot of walking for the past two months, and a lot of meeting.

Instead of measuring walks by steps I should measure them by encounters with neighbors. Today’s walk was a five-neighbor walk, for example. I'm never quite sure whom I will meet, which is part of the fun of it.

Often neighbors who are driving will just pull over to say “hi.” They frequently offer me a lift, but I explain that I have to get my daily 10,000 steps in.

The other thing that has been happening on the walks is that I have been having these oxygenated thoughts. I guess that’s a good description. They are almost little epiphanies.

Today, as I passed a group of pre-schoolers on their way to play in Gabriel Park, I made a point of looking at their faces carefully, trying to imagine each of them as their parents must see them – cherished, wondrous beings.

Twenty children must have filed by me. Each so different and each utterly cherished.

As I passed a fellow walker talking on her cell phone, I also got into the reality of carrying my cell phone with me. I’ve resisted it and rarely use it. But recently I’ve accepted having it with me as part of what it means to be a 21st Century human being. The technology has changed who we are and how we relate to each other.

Isolation is a choice we now must make, no matter where we are.

A final ‘walking’ thought is related to a post ("Time that 'slips off the mind'") from a couple days ago. I had remarked how in our culture fixation on the future consumes the past, while in other cultures the indelible past destroys the future. It is worth adding that in yet other cultures the present – “the eternal now” – is so important, so much the focus of being, that the concepts of past and future vanish.

Seeing the faces of those children, really regarding them one-by-one as they passed me, was such an experience of the moment. A momentous experience.

Final note: This is the first post I have composed on my new Neo. More about that tomorrow.