I arrived at the trailhead before daybreak. It’s still quite dark. The season is changing. Yesterday morning felt very much like autumn as I waited for the sun. This morning it feels like a midsummer morning, warm-ish, humid, and still. The morning is almost silent, aside from the chorus of peeping frogs and chirping insects down in the meadow grass, or away along the riverbank. I hear a rooster crow some distance away; it’s farm country on the other side of the river. (This side, too, and all around this county, taking into account the many vineyards, actually.) I sit with my thoughts and wait for the sun.
Yesterday was a good day, a lot got done. Funny thing about getting shit done though… there’s somehow nearly always something more to do. That’s true today. I’ve got quite a few things on my list, and work and caregiving besides. Some days it feels like a heavy burden, other days not so much. This morning I feel a bit tired, and I am enduring an amount of physical pain that may become difficult to manage as the day wears on. Life. Struggle (and pain) is part of the human experience. It’s not so bad… I need to wrap up the last details of yesterday’s project, which involves washing all my cherished breakables before placing them back on shelves. I need to do some returns. (I sit for a moment thinking about how much “shopping” has changed with the rise of e-commerce.) That’s really it, for “the big stuff”, and from this vantage point it doesn’t seem all that big. lol Perspective.
It’s still quite dark. Daybreak comes some time after 06:00 a.m. these days and sunrise after 06:30 a.m. The workers employed on the construction site adjacent to this first stretch of the trail are starting to arrive. I change my shoes for my boots. It won’t be long now… An owl silently swoops low, passing over the car, seeming huge and menacing overhead, before dipping lower still and disappearing into the meadow grass. I wonder what she found there?
I breathe, exhale, and relax. I take my morning meds a minute before my reminder goes off, feeling pleased by my timing and memory, and happy to silence the alarm without having to hear it. My tinnitus is loud lately, so loud. More than a mild distraction these days, and sometimes enough to drive me to tears of aggravation and annoyance. Inescapable. Ceaseless. Irritating. I focus on the distant rooster, the nearby traffic, the sound of my own breathing – any distraction from the tinnitus is welcome and helpful, however briefly.
I probably bitch about aging and wellness-related crap more than is necessary or in any way interesting. In part, it’s simply that this is my lived experience, and that’s what I write about. There’s also an element of wanting to handle such things differently than my elders did; a lot of this shit frankly came as a huge fucking surprise to me when “my turn” came to experience it, and I resented the fuck out of not having some idea what I might be facing (sometimes still do). A “culture of silence” or secrecy, or even well-intentioned excessive discretion only serves to leave us all ignorant of the realities of aging, and ill-equipped to improve the state of things for ourselves or anyone else. So. I talk about it.
The sky begins to lighten. The clear starry night begins to fade, revealing a gray hazy morning. Feels like it may be quite a hot day today…
Daybreak arrives. It’s enough light to see the trail. I’m eager to get to my feet and get going. I feel a certain sense of satisfaction and contentment and… fitness; I’ve lost about 25 lbs since I started on the Ozempic back in April. I don’t say much about it day-to-day, but it’s certainly a piece of the puzzle these days. Losing some weight takes some pressure off my reconstructed spine and my wrecked ankle. The walking is easier because of it. The easier walking has me enjoying it more, which encourages me to do more of it, going farther at a faster pace. I can’t turn the clock back, but these seem like worthy results nonetheless. I keep at it. Improving my nutrition. Getting better rest. Undertaking more exercise. Practicing my practices. Walking on. My results vary, and for now they’re mostly pretty good. I enjoy that and hope to enjoy it all the way to my weight and fitness goals. It’s not about perfection or mastery. It’s a journey, and the journey is the destination.
I glance at the sky, in the direction of the rising sun. It’s a new day. Definitely time to begin again.
Evening Light 