small steps out into the light

I got off topic a bit, so excited I was to discuss headlights. Honestly, 4000 lumens?? But anyway, there are other choices to make that cut corners. Today, for instance, I took the dog for a walk. A neighbor dog was out, with whom he'd previously had an altercation, so I turned around to spare us all that grief, and we ended up exploring the meadow behind my house, which occasionally pretends to be a drainage field. Major Tom and I looked at some wild flowers and appreciated the 7 a.m. sunlight flooding through the trees. A squirrel prompted us up the hill, from which we had to climb out completely. By that time we were halfway into Squirrel Hill, where there was coffee waiting. I could have made a number of decisions to turn around, but it was a beautiful morning. We walked through the new permiculture development  in affect, and through the cobbled neighborhoods of Orthodox Jews and Asian CMU students. Once home, I still had to go back up the hill to get some work done. The scooter has made this so easy, but it's these short cuts that make me slow and (feel) fat and make me less inclined to push myself. I used to have the energy and attitude to always attack the climb, and now I'm a bit more relaxed (or lazy), and I want to change that in at least some ways. So I rode my bike up, and of course I felt better about it, and while my legs are tired from the challenging ride last night and the hike this morning, I tried to harness all my energy to go up the hill with passion and as a result I have even more stocked up than I thought.

My body wants to be lazy and restless, it wants to get old and slow down and turn it's energy into anxiety. But I can't let it. I won't. It's a small anecdote of a larger story about getting old, (re)claiming my life crash after crash, ache after ache. Some fear is warranted. It is dangerous to ride a muddy root switchback descent with a poor lighting system and no health insurance. It's not dangerous to ride a bike 2 miles up a hill to sit in an air conditioned coffee shop. If I can do one (with much swearing, toe dabbing, and grunting), the other, surely, must be accomplished without blush.