Take some time today

What a different world it is when you slow down!

When I traverse the Greenway by bicycle, or on a run, it is simple a means of conveyance. I zip (or quickly lumber, if enjoying a run) past the familiar catalpas and sumacs, noting at a glance which flowers have stopped blooming and which leaves are beginning to turn. Without slowing down, I greet the cardinals chipping in the brush and the quiet tap-tap-tap of the little downy woodpecker foraging on stems down in the now-dry cells.

I will often bring the camera in my little bicycle basket and stop to take pictures if something catches my eye. But the threshold for eye-catching is so much higher on a bicycle, having to stop, dismount, prop up the vehicle, pick up the camera, remove the lens cap, and get the subject in focus! If it was a bird or butterfly, chances are it has already moved out of view by the time I get the camera to my eye.

So I find myself just passing the world by, and making excuses as I do. Oh, there's a monarch. Stop? Nah, I've got plenty of photos of them this month. The sun looks pretty glinting off those leaves...stop? No, a photo wouldn't do it justice.

And those are just the things I notice. How many more tiny lives escape our sight when we move quickly through our neighborhood? What appears to be an empty aster from a distance turns out to be hosting a little female Melissodes bee, with luxuriously lengthy leg hairs. On foot, she is the focus of intense scrutiny for a minute or more. By bicycle? Completely unseen.

Or the distant buckeye, backlit against the afternoon sun. At a walking pace, there is time to admire the way the light shines through the light spots on its wings as it balances briefly on a spent flower. On wheels--invisible.

Traveling by foot can be an exercise in mindfulness, an immersion into things normally unseen and an experience of all the life that surrounds us day by day.

Slow down. Look around. Experience the world, don't just pass it by.