How are you traveling on your Journey? Have you ever put any thought into how you get from place to place every day? How does that effect your life and ultimately your experience? Today I have two short stories that will help express this thought.
Some of you know I own a motorcycle. I love it. It is a Suzuki Boulevard C50 street bike. I have had it now for about three years. I have always been interested in motorcycles, but a few years back I finally was able to justify it when gas prices broke 3.00 a gallon. While I could easily prattle on about how much money I have saved over the past three years riding my motorcycle to work every day, I will not. Everyone needs to find their own way in todays world of ever increasing gas prices. No, today I would like to tell you about something I have experienced on my motorcycle. It shocks me every time and I find it interesting. Trees. When I am riding my motorcycle and I hit a section of town that has old growth trees edging the streets the temperature drops dramatically. Not just a little mind you, I honestly mean dramatically. The same holds true when you finally leave town. As you drive out of town on the main road and you pass the last housing district it happens. Just like in the trees, there is an obvious drop in temperature. I contribute it to the sudden shift from cement streets to open grass lands. I find both of these two experiences to be very interesting and telling all the same.
The other thought I had was today when Mary and I went for a hike. We started at the Middle Columbine trailhead and hiked three miles along a canyon to Helen Hunt falls here in Colorado Springs. The hike was much harder than I remembered for it had been years since I last hiked it. Mary and I decided that rather than take the trail back we would walk back down the paved road to where we had parked our car. This paved road is a beautiful drive right through the middle of a canyon with a stream that follows the road all the way from the start of the canyon. As we walked the road back to our car we were serenaded by the roaring sound of the stream that runs through the canyon. It dawned on me that all the cars that were driving past us were missing something. Something very wonderful. After about a mile we came to a very narrow section of the stream that was roaring very loudly. We stopped and enjoyed the sound and view that was nestled over the edge of the road such that no car could ever see it.
So there is my deep thought for the day. How are you traveling on your journey through life? Maybe you should shake things up everyone once in a while just to see the ordinary every day things differently. Walk to the grocery store. Bike to the library. Roll the windows down, turn off the stereo and listen to the sounds of the road. I don’t know what will work for you but think about it and try something different soon.
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So, tell us… what does this investigation of “nature” mean to you? Is it the fact that you’ve “ignored” it for so long that surprises you? That there is a true force of the natural that you find moving? That the fast-paced lives we lead can somehow walk us down a path of electronic-bliss yet leave us unsuspectingly lacking in the true nature of the world around us? What does it mean that the roaring stream is something you are only now in a place to notice?