Windswept.  After fierce winds screeched through the Foothills last night, the detritus of countless porches, patios and driveways lay strewn across the lawns.  Chairs were upside down.  Grill lids lay yards from their rests.  Plants had been pulled from their pots.  Building materials sat far from all projects.  Mayhem.

But even with all of that, the most remarkable thing was that most of the world looked unaffected.  The houses still stood with their roofs and windows intact.  Cars sat without tree limbs poking from the windshields.  Small animals and children were safe indoors.

So, the wind came and shook things up, but once again, the world has righted itself.

On my walk today I came upon two things that surprised me. One was a pair of shoes, perfectly good just lying in the grass beside the sidewalk; the other was a full glass of water sitting atop an electrical box next to the sidewalk.

What could have led to these things being left as they were? Was someone suddenly struck by the urge to go barefoot such that he shed his shoes and ran on? The shoes didn’t appear to have been fouled in any way, say by having stepping in dog doo. There were no socks. We can only speculate…

And the glass of water, well, I don’t know either. It looked like a clean glass taken straight from someone’s kitchen, though none were close by. Cool, refreshing and inviting, I can imagine it looking like a treasure to some hot and thirsty soul on a different day. Again, we can only speculate…

Isn’t it fun to wonder just why things might be out of place?

Two words from my walk: contrails and cows.

I looked up at the sky towards the Foothills and saw six white feathery lines marking where jets had passed. Falsely they appeared to come right out of the mountain like steam from a volcano. I wondered what the sky would look like if each plane that flew left a line in the sky. Immediately, those maps that mark the trajectories of airlines in the onboard flight magazines came to mind. How lucky we are that the sky isn’t littered with permanent marks from each airplane.

As I looked skyward, my nose picked up a familiar scent: cow. I scanned the field below me and found the cows have returned to the ranch just over the hill from my walking trail. All summer they were off on some distant acreage feasting on grasses of unknown delights. Now they have come home for the winter where the rancher can more easily subsidize their diet when the snows come and the ground is covered.

Then, as my mind wandered, my two thoughts merged and I wondered what the field would look like if the trajectory of each cow moving around the pasture remained as a residual line in the air.

I’m glad that history doesn’t leave a visible trace of either cows or contrails.

When I walked today, the sun had passed over the Foothills so much of the target of my gaze was in shadow. But when I looked up, the second ridge of the mountains was bathed in bright light. Like a spotlight, the sun drew my attention to the hilltop. Everything seemed to stand out–the trees, the rocks, the terrain. It seemed incredible since the sun had been “down” where I was for quite a while, but on the other side of the hills, it was still bright daylight.

Once the sun sets, the air cools and it feels like something is lost. Interesting what blocking the rays will do…

Why did changing over from daylight savings time cause such a disruption to my walking schedule? I’m not sure. I had been happily walking in the mornings but after the time switch (and the cooler weather, to be honest), I decided to try walking in the afternoons.

It’s not working. When I started the day with a walk, it got done; if I leave it until later, it’s dinner time before I remember that I didn’t hit the trail. And it’s dark.

It occurs to me that making any significant schedule adjustments takes time to acclimate. I can blame it on the time change or the weather, but isn’t it really about me not putting on my coat and heading out the door? Hmmm…is it all about me? I wonder…

Perhaps I should go outside right now, wonder and walk??

I walked today with my fifteen year old daughter.  It’s nice to hit the trail together when she gets home from school so that we can catch up on the day’s activities.  She can get to the piles of homework when we get back, but while we are out, all of that is far away and of little concern.

When we were just around the corner from our house, we passed our neighbor putting stain on a deck.  His dog, Sam, was lying in the sun killing time until the job was done so we invited the pooch to join us.  Happy to oblige, Sam hopped up and headed off down the trail.

It’s a different walk with a dog, more stops for sniffing and marking and, well, dog duties.  But we had fun speculating what he was thinking about why we didn’t engage in these activities, what news he read with his nose, and so on.

Almost at the end of our jaunt, my daughter and Sam waited for me to cross the street so I could deposit the poop bag in the only garbage can nearby, and in those few minutes I missed the biggest adventure of all.  With my back turned, Sam pounced into the tall grass and emerged with a rodent clamped in his mighty jaws.  My daughter enticed Sam to drop the beast just as I was walking back and it looked huge…not a rat, though, maybe a vole?  It lay there wet with Sam’s saliva and looked for all intents and purposes, dead to the world.  We were amazed that this mild-mannered canine could catch such a fast moving thing in so short a time.  We managed to get away leaving it on the sidewalk hoping that Sam hadn’t received any nips or bites.  Of course, we reported all of this to our neighbor when we dropped Sam off and he couldn’t believe it.  “Sam?  Catch something?” and he scurried back to see if he could identify the species of the rodent.

The beast was gone when he arrived.  We hope the thing was just stunned when we left it motionless on the sidewalk.  As soon as we left, perhaps it shook itself back to life and headed home with grand stories of how he escaped a terrible fate.

We headed home too with tales of the rodent pounced by the pooch.  It all reminds me that even mild-mannered Sam still has a bit of the wild residing within.

My walk today was W -I-N-D-Y!! The leaves swirled around newly plucked from their branches.  And a carpet of their compatriots who had fallen before them lay upon the grass dazzling in their autumnal shades.

Still warm, it was a an absolutely spectacular morning to be outside.  The sun was bright, the sky was clear.  The colors were intense under that true blue sky.

What a blessing to be out and about today…

Today I got caught walking twice and both times my across-the-street neighbor spied me.  He had a good excuse to be out since he was walking his big dog.  I was just rambling for the pure fun and health of it.  Okay, those are good excuses too.

It was pretty funny actually since the first time I had stopped en route to the trail to put a bowl full of refuse into our experimental compost can in the garage.  When he walked by I was stirring the contents with a shovel.  I must have looked like a witch stirring my cauldron.  The second time he saw me out on the trail and I was nose to nose with a giant pine tree taking close-up photos of the bark.

I acknowledged that I was up to some rather unusual activities, laughed awkwardly and went about my picture snapping.  He said he had wondered why I was shoveling the contents of our garbage can, then asked me if I had seen the bark on a tree much further up the trail.  It sounded interesting and I should get up there.

So all in all it was a good day.  I got in two walks, some good photos, a tip on some interesting bark…and very likely a reputation as eccentric.

Recently I’ve noticed that a lot of people on the walking path are talking on the phone as they stroll.  And quite a few others have ear buds in place while they listen to who knows what while they cover the terrain.

This multitasking goes contrary to my nature, my philosophy of paying attention to where I am when I am there.  Of course, I do occasionally do more than one thing at a time myself, but I really try not to when walking.  Most of the time, I don’t even walk with another person so that I can devote my attention to the environment.

So, a phone on the path?  Not for me.

It was a funny feeling, cool on my front and warm on my back.  I felt sort of like I was floating face down in a cool pool on a bright day.  The sun was still fairly low in the sky so it hadn’t warmed up much but directly in the rays, it felt toasty and reassuring.  I pondered turning and going the other direction to reverse the temperature variant, but opted against it.  It felt good just the way it was.

Today I didn’t walk alone; I walked with anger.  Anger doesn’t make a very good companion, keeping me distracted from the views and observations of interesting happenings along my way.

When I heard the voice of a small boy calling, “Hi! Hi! Hi!” while lifting his shirt to show me his belly button, anger tugged my arm to keep me from stopping to say more than “Hi and bye.”  Anger didn’t want me to lose the intensity of negative feelings.

And so we walked on, anger and I, all along my usual path.  At the bottom of the hill, we passed a cat that looked ominously about to enter the road.  I stopped and called to it but it didn’t come.  Should I try to intervene or had the cat traveled this path a thousand times?  Anger encouraged me to leave it, confident the cat could find its own way.

Anger didn’t dissipate but stuck with me along the entire loop until I crested the hill a second time and gazed again at the spectacular view of the mountains.  That’s when I had had enough and I walked on leaving anger there to fend for itself.

I hadn’t wanted to mention it, but the leaves are turning.  The old fogey in me is saying, “But the summer has gone so quickly, it can’t be fall already!”  Indeed those lazy, hot days have passed hastily and that season is almost gone!  In just a few days it will be the equinox again with the hours of day the same as the hours of night…and the world is getting ready.  New colors are everywhere, preparing to dazzle us before they fade and leave us with the drab brown of winter.

This winter I am going to go on a search for colors among the shades of neutral.  It will be something to look forward to.

But in the meantime, I’m ready for the wild palette of autumn.  Let ‘er rip!!