Life’s Too Short to Take Short Walks

Sometimes, a journey will go awry.  You tell yourself in the beginning of things, “I’m going to go to Such a Place for Such Reasons and will do This, That, and the Other.”  Whether you’re moving cities, or visiting the other side of the world, or just running errands for heaven’s sake, things don’t always go according to your plans.

But then you get to the Place, realize that what you had in mind won’t possibly work, and what you planned on doing is subsequently… rubbish.  The adventure, you tell yourself, is a sham.  That job you thought would be wonderful falls to pieces, the place you live has somehow dissolved, and you cannot for the life of you recall why you thought this plan was a good one.

Se la vie.

But then sometimes, just sometimes, if you shut your pie hole long enough, and listen well, and genuinely command your brain “Be silent!”… well, sometimes the Heart of the world can finally get a word in edgewise.

I’ve been learning a thing or two about intuition.  (Don’t worry, I am well aware of how tempting it may be to categorize me as a ‘mystic’ or some transcendental occultist, but really how else do you describe the New Testament? At least my head isn’t consumed in tongues of fire…) (Definitionally here, intuition: where the Holy Spirit grabs hold of natural instinct and brings them in line.)

Call it whatever you like (the leading of the Spirit) but the more keenly I listen to whatever this Inner Voice is, the more I realize that the Naturalists are wrong: we are more than just physical bodies.  People get out of the way just before a car crashes.  Women know the instant they meet their husbands.  Children ask just the right question about something they have no way of knowing.  It’s those moments when we obey ‘a feeling’ we had when we know this is all true.  It’s the periods when we can’t see the forest for the trees when Intuition becomes a wive’s tale.

Someone I used to know had this gift of weaving the most picturesque stories of places he loved best.  My favorite tales revolved around where I am currently, now, just this second, sitting:  here along the Thames outside Oxford, an area I visited only once when I was young.  He spoke so reverently of the fields and towering trees that I knew the moment he spoke this was one of those places that called to my heart, to my words.

And so, early this morning after porridge and coffee, I made my way to a tiny town just north of Oxford.  The Trout, who’s claim to fame is being the location C.S. Lewis penned many a novel, sat riverside.  Attractive and pleasing and delightfully old-fashioned, it hunkers down between the road and an old stone bridge arching away from the Inn.  Across the water lies a ruin of an old church, dowsed in shadow from the neighboring tree line. Geese and ducks and the occasional peacock honked and grackled their early morning welcomes to each other, bathing in the river Thames and chomping at what grasses they could reach.  A woman and her sporting dog came briskly along the road, taking turns with a tennis ball.  Yet another sunny day in England in March; I had to laugh at the ridiculous perfection of it all.  “Who am I, Lord,” I mused, “that you would smile so brightly upon one day in this little life of mine?”

The plan had been to hunker down in The Trout and write all day long, paying homage to the man himself who first awoke imagination in me.  Taking a deep breath, I grabbed the door handle and pulled… no budge.  Nothing.  I tried a bit harder.  Nope, that was a locked door.

It then struck me: of course, it is not even nine in the morning yet.  Nothing is open around here for ages.

Like I said, sometimes adventures go awry.

God is nothing if not hospitable.  With that one literally closed door, He opened up the far and away, hands down most wonderful walk (and day) of my young, vagabonding life.

With written directions in hand (of the sort: “when standing on the bridge which crosses the thames just west of the trout… well, keep walking west and you’ll see an island…keep going a little further and you’ll see a wooden gate on your left off the road that lets you down into a pasture where a series of old ruins stand on your right…” you get the idea) I crossed over to the far side and began The Walk.

I crossed into the open field only to be faced with a childhood nemesis: the goose.  Many of them, actually.  Hundreds of them, actually.  Have you ever been attacked by a goose? By a very large duck, at least? Well, if not, then you have no room to scoff at how I handled facing two hundred of them at once.  The little blighters stuck strictly to the path, to the semi-dry dirt road made for people.  Instead of repeating a horrid childhood (and adult) experience (don’t make me relive the danger by telling you) I shamelessly tied up my boots and made my way across the gloopy, early-morning-frosted field. Around the birds on the dry path, I preferred to keep my calves intact and get sopping wet in the procedure.

Shut up. You would have too.

But the sun was out in full and inviting.  (The wet boots still aren’t dry, but I don’t have any gashes on my legs from goose-bites.  Worth it.)  I ambled, yes, ambled, along my merry trek.  Not a soul accompanied me on my side of the river.  But across the bank there lay a field, a wide expansive plot which hugs the outside of Oxford, buffering her.  This green shimmered as frost gave way to warmth; and then I saw them… my heart leapt out of my chest.  There, in this field, stood a bevy of horses.  A community spot for all the equine!  Ah, England.  You gladden my heart.

Walking along, I spotted a horse, a Shire by the look of him, and followed him for a time.  The sloped Roman-esque nose, the wooly winter coat hanging down, the heavy hoofs slowly plodding the bank.  Two terriers appeared from the path behind him, yapping and dancing about the Shire’s feet.  He withstood the taunting as long as anyone could expect before turning on the two imps and nosing them away, stomping lightly behind the pair, ears pinned back.

And then he saw me.  We looked, this horse and I, across the Thames’ glassy sheen, each intent upon the other.  His woolen ears relaxed, his weight shifted comfortably to his back haunches.  There we remained, though for how long I will never know.  Everything left my brain as I gazed at this magical old character.  Worry and doubt of the future, insecurities from the past… all evaporated and the English sun shone and the chippering birds persisted and the Thames drifted, and this Shire horse blinked knowingly at me.

As he turned towards the greenery behind, I saw him favor a limp in one of his back legs.  An old injury, by how natural his damaged movements appeared, as though he long ago forgot how to walk without a limp.

I have no grand conclusions to pull for now, no ah-ha moments aside from this: to live at all is a gift, but to enjoy living is the only task worth attempting.  Whether it’s the man fishing for his lunch while his boy tends the farm, or the young woman working the pub and laughing heartily at all the horrible puns she hears, or the old lady who keeps planning walking trips across the country she’s lived in for over seventy years… I have heard a thing or two that would leave me bettered by hearing them.

Se la vie.

Grace and peace to you today, wherever you may be.

SO GOOD–