The beginning again

This is the beginning again. I have started a few blogs... and here is yet another. Some have died off at their allotted time, others, in their youth. I intend to keep this specific blog open and ongoing. I walk with Chaucer, my two year old Chocolate Lab, down the winding dirt roads of Rutland State Park almost every morning before work. I teach eighth grade English. I have found that this time is bordering on necessary for me to find center. It has been a long winter. I don't walk him in the mornings in the winter, not because of the cold... although, sometimes it is because of the cold, but because of the light. Those dark days when it is dark when I leave for work and dark when I return home from it are among the most difficult for me. They are done now and  it is Spring time, time for things to begin again, be it blogs or walks or life in general.

I thought about jogging in the mornings. I really did. I am not against exercise. I actually bike to work when the weather is warm enough. It was the closeness that I couldn't give up. These walks, for me, are time both wide and narrow in focus. There is something about the cold morning air that gives me clarity on larger issues. In the same regard, I am always drawn to the details of my walk. I am sure that anyone (foolishly possibly) choosing to walk with me, would become pretty frustrated fairly quickly. I stop a lot. All the time actually. I stop to look at hoarfrost covered thorn bushes, cardinals lit crimson with the sunrise. I stop and look at tracks and coyote scat and the way the water rushes over the new beaver dam. This is my world... large and small. What I gain in the mornings, is perspective. I know more clearly my place in the world: That this outdoor world continues when I head indoors. It all falls into place into the larger rhythms of the outdoors. I find comfort in the fact that my little classroom and its 100 or so students, all with concerns and troubles and drama... god the drama... all exists within the fold of that larger picture. That school is one small dot held in the palms of the roads that I traveled that morning.... You see, jogging in the mornings really isn't for me. I will walk with Chaucer and ride my bike later. The mornings are for finding who I am and where I matter.