I have discovered I have a tendency to look down while walking. I'm not sure when this originated, or why, but I simply walk with a downcast gaze, often lost in my thoughts. This is a habit I've been trying to break whilst down under. There is so much to see everywhere I go, that I feel I am severely limiting myself by stumbling around, eyes fixed to the floor, tangled in my own meandering thoughts. Instead, I've been trying to turn my gaze and my thoughts outwards. A simple 30 minutes walk down the bike path to the supermarket becomes a veritable laser light show of sights and sounds: I hear the thrumming of insects in the grass, sounding for all the world like the audible exhale of the earth. I watch the tall grasses ripple in the breeze and feel the warmth of the sun on my back, warming me through my t-shirt. I look at the ground under the shade of a gum tree, then stop and really look at it, noticing tiny lizards no longer than my littlest finger skating under and over the tangle of leaves on the ground. The breeze stirs my hair and dries the sweat on the back of my neck, as the tail of a snake disappears into the underbrush. A magpie eyes me suspiciously, then continues to awkwardly sidle up his branch, from which he will survey his domain and rain horrible screeches upon any and all who dare enter his kingdom. I continue on, over the precarious wooden bridge arcing over the creek, now brown and swollen from the torrential rains which have finally come, fourteen years late, to the parched countryside. I walk in silence, cresting the slight hill from which no civilization is visible, save for the paved path beneath my feet and the lights on the football field jutting upwards in the distance. I hear the sound of my own breathing, quiet amongst all the other sounds, as my footsteps disturb a small family of moths whose dusty wings buffet my face and body as they regroup and continue their loopy paths into the sky.
I know in a bit I will come back out to the main road. I will walk for a couple blocks, past the footy fields where the old shirtless man runs countless laps, slapping each goalpost as he passes it. He will acknowledge me with a grunt, I will raise a hand in greeting and walk on. Traffic will pick up, and I will invariably be honked at by passing vans, or cars full of teenage boys will scream out the window to watch me jump, startled. I will head up the hill, past the fast food restaurant, into the grocery store where I will dodge small children and their pursuing mothers, tired old people, and overworked cashiers. After making my purchases, I will head back down the hill, this time laden with shopping bags. The magic of my walk will be somewhat spoiled on the walk home, as my shopping bags bangs discordantly against my knees and the small hills become more difficult under my load. But I will still look up, up at the sky, up at the trees swaying gently in the ever present wind. I will still notice the dead tree jutting out of the center of the pond, upon which ten or twenty cranes have chosen to perch, hulking, warming their black feathers in the sunlight. I will still watch the caterpillars undertake the arduous journey across the path, determined in the face of the whirring wheels of passing cyclists. I will reflect, not upon my own passing faults and foibles, but upon how fortunate I am to be where I am, how blessed to watch these next few months stretch out before me, bursting with possibilities.
So I think the least I can do, in the face of all this beauty, is to look up.
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