So recently I’ve taken up jogging again. I’ll spare you the whys. But, I’m doing it. I don’t go far and I don’t go fast, but I did download a nifty iPhone app that lets me track my so-called “work out” and post maps of it to social media.
I feel so modern.
Boring...
One problem with my work-out tracking map is that most of my runs are straight lines — that is, I go to trails in parks around the area, run a mile in one direction, and then turn around and jog, or walk, back the other way.
But that means my “map” is basically just a red line. It’s about as interesting and welcome as a short nose bleed on a white shirt just before a job interview.
What I need is an app with a bit more whimsey…say, something that generates a map that might have absolutely nothing to do with any real run I’ve ever taken anywhere, but which would have lots of interesting stuff on it…like circles, and loop-de-loops, and mountains, and occasional side trips to imaginary locations which appear with hallucinogenic intensity when least expected.
You know…sort of like the mind set of a QAnoner on Acid.
But with fewer lizard people and more Yellow Submarines.
But …maybe…maybe…
Maybe I should get all serious again. Sorry. It’s a bad habit. But I can’t seem to break it.
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Not so boring...
Maybe I should say that the real problem isn’t the map per se, but that the map doesn’t reveal what I need most to share with you. It does not share what I see…the winding trail through the trees…the oaks, the ash, the cedar…the leaves, the tiny creatures, the birds…the cardinals, the robins, the woodpeckers, the nervous dash of the hummingbirds, the screeching grackles…feathers scarlet, blue, a million millions shades of brown, black so very black it becomes indigo…
The beasts…squirrels, voles, mice …the time I met the armadillos burrowing through the leaves, fearless, indifferent to my presence…the track of a fox, a coyote…deer…something larger, but unseen…
The flowers…the wild profusion of flowers, particularly, the spring, when Texas is at its best…the poppies, the bluebonnets…Indian paintbrush….brown eyed Susan, windup….
The people, particularly the children, released for the moment from Covid and office and school…
Or my favorite route…up across the Georgetown Dam…from whence you can see the lake, the town, and…well, everything…there, in the wind at the top of the world.
Yes…
That’s the problem.
I can’t describe that to you…not in a map, anyway…
You will just have to come and see me one day, and we will walk one or more of those trails together, and see it all.
And never give a damn about maps, or runs, or beating the clock…
Not when there is so much wonder to be explored.
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Until next time…
Onward and upward.
~mjt
Copyright©2021 Michael Jay Tucker