Blink your eyes if you are perfect.
Did you blink? If you did, you probably think your bwoot don’t stink, either.
But for some of you, I’m going to consider that maybe you didn’t blink on purpose. As for me, I mess up all the time or do things on accident, even in my “wise old” 26 years. And when I do mess up, I like to take a long walk to sit somewhere private and quiet in nature to reflect on my actions — no distractions.
Today, I went for a very, very, very, long walk.
I strolled my way down a paved trail by my house that winds through a sparse man-made “forest”. A nature spot nonetheless, it was my best option at a moment’s notice.
I walked in the warm, late summer sunshine, soaking up every bit I could of the pure energy around me. I instantly feel better when I go outside, like I can properly breath — maybe you’ve had this feeling a time or two. It was almost as if I were being detoxified or baptized from my mistakes by Mother Nature herself. I felt the kiss of my ancestors in the breeze on my cheek, telling me to direct myself, once again, back to the Red Road.
I envisioned the long, paved path ahead of me as my own personal journey: my own Red Path. In the pavement, there were splits and cracks through the packed-in, tiny rocks. These cracks lead through the entire length of the path, back to where it met again with suburban sidewalk.
I started stepping over all the cracks, reminiscing in a game I played as a child walking to and from school.
“Step on a crack and you’ll break your mother’s back!”
If not familiar with this game, I’m sure the object of it is pretty clear.
As I tippy-toed over and around the cracks, I realized that there was grass and weeds growing inside of every scarred crevice. The natural world, retained by a supposedly solid, man-made foundation, had managed to crawl its way into every split in the path I was walking on.
These cracks looked like wounds from countless seasons of harsh weather, yet through them grew life. Within them grew something more beautiful; leaked in from the outside, holding the entire path together as one with the ground — in a vine of subservient constant change and growth.
The bounty from which these ‘green cracks’ came from sat a step to either side of me. Still, somehow I found a little more wonderment in the weeds that were growing in the scars.
On my way home, I made extra careful not to step on the cracks filled with fragile greenery, in a new appreciation. Besides, you never know about the whole ‘break your mother’s back’ thing …
