Stepping Off the Path

Today was an incredibly hot day, even for Florida’s standards. The humidity was so thick in the air that my hair frizzed in protest. And any sane person would have chosen to stay indoors on a day like this, in the cool air conditioning, with no protesting hair and no sweat beads on their brow.

It seems my sanity is in question.

Instead, I packed up a snack, dressed in comfortable workout clothes, donned my running shoes, grabbed the camera and my ipod, and headed off to a nearby park to hike the nature trails. It was absolutely gorgeous outside, despite the heat index, and I plugged along through the trees, snapping photographs of anything that caught my eye (which was quite a lot). It didn’t take long before I found myself stooping to take a macro-shot of a blooming flower, or a lone mushroom, or a cluster of bright purple berries with brilliant green vine-shoots looping around them. So much for power walking.

As I moved from one nature discovery to the next, a thought came to mind. Had I been too focused on the exercise aspect of this trip, I would have missed all of these incredible sights. I would have missed seeing the baby catfish in the creek, and the tree with knots that looked like a face. I would have passed by the beautiful moss-covered stones and the “fairy-step” mushrooms growing up the side of a giant oak. I wouldn’t have truly appreciated the way the sunlight filtered through the canopy above, and how the passing breeze rustling the leaves and grasses sounded like a great peaceful sigh.

Many of us go through life so focused on meeting a goal that we don’t see what we’re passing by. We continue on our chosen path and never stop to look around, to question and wonder and feel and see. Today’s nature hike was a wonderful reminder for me, when life gets in the way of living, to step off the path and marvel in the beauty surrounding us.