reflections on movement

Can you remember the motion of your childhood?  How you could barely walk but rather skip through your steps? Do you remember running and never feeling tired?  

I'll be 26 next month, but I can still feel the individual blades of grass underneath my bare feet in my front yard.  I remember that giant tree that we would sit under and eat salted watermelon. I remember that giant hornet's nest.  

I can trace the circles around my house playing freeze-tag and then later, the more evolved and challenging TV freeze-tag.  It was always "Smurfs" and "Thundercats" and "Fragle Rock."  Not particularly in that order.  I remember that crush that I had on my neighbor Courtney.  All long, brown hair and eyes like saucers. I would have gone anywhere with that one.  She was a year or two older than me, a sage in experience and secret knowledge that she would unlock to me slowly over the summer days while we blew dandy lions.  It was Courtney who first introduced me to honeysuckles.  If there were ever a treasure in God's creation that could find itself in this muggy South, it is the honeysuckle.  Nothing provokes wonder in a five year old than something like that.  

The movement that we would have is what captures my memories. Running for the ice cream truck.  Scaling the fence into the park at the end of the street. Conquering an old tree.  And then another one.  And always another.  There could never to be a drought of trees that could be climbed. They had to be challenged, they needed to be discovered way up.  We were the Magellan's and the De Leon's.  We had to know what it was like to be in the canopy, we had to know how high we could go before the branches would bend too far.  It felt like our fountain of youth was up there, pouring out of these secret spots in the trunk high above the gaze of our busy parents.  This was our life, our mission, our wholly owned and splendid purpose. 

Something happens when we get older.  The whole point of our motion as a kid is lost in the greater flow of ambitions and expectations.  We can get by for awhile in high school but when we hit 18, those moments slowly start slipping away, like lost mementos fallen out of our pockets and rapidly swept down stream with the current of the river we were trying to cross.  Why did we cross those rivers?  Because they needed to be crossed by us.  Because we had to have that thrill of that emotion that only daring could bring us. 

So here I am now.  All of those bright colors of my formative years are slowly being washed out by time; but that pull, that basic need to move is still in me.   

I walk a lot, these days.  I take these brisk jaunts around the lake down in Peachtree City.  It comes out to around 20 miles a week, which is kind of staggering to think about because it is just walking, you know.  Its just an hour here, an hour there, wearing out the pavement of the path that snakes through the woods by the water.  I'm starting to get this feeling that the animals that make their home along those paths are beginning to get used to me.  Seriously, the squirrels no longer run off the way they used to.  I hope that with some time and some trust, that they'll actually start walking with me.  Perhaps they'll bring me a nutty snack along the way.  

Walking has this incredible association in my heart now.  All this stress can build up in a day.  All of this pain can build up in your heart without even trying. It's kind of like not cleaning the shower on a regular basis.  These things are not self-cleaning.  We need an action that cleanses.  That washes.  We need that stress, that worry, that fear that gets logged in our heads and hearts to be worked out somehow.  For me it starts up top, in the congestion of my thoughts. Through each stride I can sense those feelings sinking lower and lower and lower.  

Pretty soon that pain is down in my legs.  It becomes a tightness in my thigh or a jolt in my shin.  My calves will burn because I'm going faster, desperate to work out these latent harms. Soon the disease passes to the back of my heels and then rides the roller coaster of my arches to the ball of my foot.  In a last breath, that hurt, that sting gathers it's last breath in the padding of my big toe before finally shooting out of the toes without a bit of pomp or flourish.  All of that that has happened, all of it that was taking me to places I never wanted to be is now in the pavement.  Trampled by my dying Nike's.  "Victory" in greek, but victory, none the less. 

It's that intangible something that lives down in everyone of us that keeps us moving, pressing, climbing.  It keeps us crossing those rivers,  taking those risks.  This March has been, well, unique.  Three years ago I was moving across Spain.  Two years ago I was on a bus in Mexico, on my way to the beach.  Last year I flew into Scotland and forgot my jacket.  This year I--- I walked a lot. 

And I have to keep moving.  So do you.  We have to keep pressing and we just have to be like those kids that we used to be.  Those children that saw a strange tree and climbed it.  We were those kids that were not afraid of the risks, we knew that we would be okay.  We even knew, somehow, that we would be even better once we got high up and saw the blue sky through the green leaves. 

I can close my eyes and fly away to that green grass under my feet. Each blade is as perfect as the whole creation itself.  I can feel it in my memories but what I would rather do is walk downstairs and out the front door into this chilly, thin air and feel it again for myself, for who I am-now.

Please excuse me.