Sipping Beauty

I met a walker once. Slow sipping coffee with a friend, he joined our chat. A sprightly man of seventy with the twinkling eye of a teenager. We talked about roads and running and he chided me for my speed. "You see nothing when you run. There are wonderful things to see if you only take the time to see them. You should walk more".

For a couple of weeks after we'd met, I slowed my pace a little finding small wonders on familiar paths but after a while the old habits of pace and goals blurred my vision once more.

I thought of the walker today as I drove under a canopy of green and realised that my speed had dropped to an easy glide. I drank in the air and felt the hairs on arm stir in the light breeze. Dazzled by dappled shadows, lichened rocks and lush green, I pulled into a gateway and climbed a gate, wandering for an hour through pathways and amongst the tumbled tombstones of an old burial ground until I reached the waters edge.

I stood and smiled as I realised that real beauty is something to be sipped. I still ran my run this evening, but tomorrow I think I'll take time for a walk too.