Fun Monday: Walking down Yellow Brick Road...

AOJ/The Lurchers is hosting this week! She wanted to hear about our favorite walk!

Here's the deal, my most favorite place to walk (so far) is 'back home' and I couldn't get there to take pictures. Oftentimes, I have found that walking, especially if you're walking in the woods can't be properly explained without BEING THERE. It's a total feeling and not just a sight. With
that in mind, I'll try and remember all my walks as a kid and explain them with words.

I love walking in the woods, no matter what time of year. In the winter, it's crispy and you can see your breath, you might sink in the snow or the mud, and it's just peaceful, no bugs to worry with, no snakes to try and avoid, just clear air and time to think.

The summer would be when I do the LEAST walking. The woods are full of critters going about their own business, and I wouldn't want them minding mine, so I don't mind theirs. In the summer, I'm more likely to be busy helping with gardening, the animals, or just sitting on the porch drinking tea or lemonade and saying how hot it is. Although I might escape down to the creek to see if I can find crawdads or scare up a frog in the cool mud, summer is a time best left alone.

Spring, oh sometimes I think that spring is my most favorite time to walk, but it isn't. Springtime walking has a PURPOSE. Starting way too early and going way too late, spring time walking would be all about MORELS. Skiff the garden and see if there's any asparagus poking through the ground, stuff the bag deeper in your pocket so as not to scare the mushrooms away with the rattling and HUNT! The fun thing was that you never knew where you would find mushrooms. There was never a definite spot per se, just as you can't guarantee where wildflowers will grow, you can't say where a mushroom spore will land and spring up overnight. There were a lot of years I searched for weeks after school, and then I'd go again with mom or both my parents after dinner, them hunting, me knowing there was nothing out there, but this time enjoying the walk for the bonding time. Teasing that our dog was like those pigs in France, smelling out truffles. Did nothing of the sort, of course, but it gave us something to laugh at.

Fall, yes, I think that autumn was the best time of all. You weren't rushed due to bugs, cold, or impending storms. There was nothing to search for and deep breaths would get your lungs full of intricate smells of life's journey passing by one more time. My FAVORITE place to walk was on the neighbor's property (of course) on a path called yellow brick road. Like out of the storybook. It was called that because in the fall the leaves would all turn yellow, orange, gold and brown, and as they were so tall and close together that the leaves would all fall directly onto the path and leave a golden trail to follow. There were years when the culvert washed out and you could only go so far and then you'd see the creek below where the big metal culvert should have been, it all bent up and straggling down the creek bed from a hard summer's storm. The next year it would be back again, dirt piled up on top of it, even with the road, so you could trudge on across and peer at the wonderment of the season, of life's never ending cycle, you really understood the gravity of our time here on earth in that walk. Seasons change, people, like the trees, would eventually go away, and the earth would renew itself.

I learned a lot about life on those walks. I still like to take them when I can, remember what it was like to live for the moment and not worry about the grander plan. Like in the stories, we never really got anywhere on those walks, but we did a lot of traveling and understanding in our own minds.