This used to be easier, I tell myself as I slog my way up the Big Horrible Hill, but I'm not sure that's true. Walking up that hill has always been challenging, which makes it a great workout. What's changed is pain.
My hips hurt walking up the hill and my knees hurt coming down. On the stretch of road along our creek--a lovely place to walk in any season--the road's steep bank makes my right foot and ankle bend in a way that causes constant pain and makes me limp through the home stretch. Then I sit down for a few minutes and rise to find I've stiffened up everywhere. If the walk is difficult, the aftermath is even worse.
Good thing the walk offers plenty of distractions from the pain. This morning I followed a red-tailed hawk up the hill; it would perch on a tree and shriek, and then as soon as I got a little closer, it would fly to a tree just a little bit further up the hill until it finally got tired of the chase and flew off into the woods. Elsewhere I heard kingfishers and a pileated woodpecker, but not much else was stirring in the cool morning woods.
Wildflowers are also getting more scarce--just a few tall thistles plus jewelweed, ironweed, wingleaf, some scraggly chicory and something that looked like lobelia. I should have taken along my trash-picker-upper for the fresh crop of beer cans alongside the road, but I can't handle that and the camera at the same time, and apparently I can't handle the camera either because I neglected to check whether the battery had any charge left. It did, but not enough.
But the walk recharged my batteries, calming my anxious thoughts and preparing me for the pile of reading and grading approaching just down the road. I can live with a little joint pain if it means a chance to absorb energy from a walk in the woods.
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