Walking

When I was first learning how to drive, my dad would let me drive along in the evenings from our house down the red-rock road towards the car-wash. The car wash wasn't really a car wash like the ones today, but a wide spot in Horse Creek that had a rocky bottom and was just deep enough to scoop a bucket of clean water to rinse a soapy car.
It wasn't risky because cars rarely used the old road and when you did pass a vehicle, it was usually creeping along because anything faster you'd lost a tire. The red-rock could be sharp as a razor if you hit them just right.
So I'd make several trips back and forth from our house down to the car-wash. Many evenings I passed an old guy who was a neighbor walking the old road. I called him an old man, but in retrospect, he was probably younger than I am now. But I would slow down as I passed and ask if he wanted a ride. He always refused saying I'm just enjoy Mother Nature. Having wheels, I didn't get it. I had spent the previous thirteen years walking and I would not have walked to the outhouse if I could have gotten the car around in our back yard and driven it the few hundred feet.
These days, I get it. I spend a great deal of time driving to and from work and when I get home, I enjoy a nice long walk. This evening as I made my way down our walking path behind the barn down the the rock overlooking the pond, I heard an Owl, a Whip-o-Will, a young fox barking and saw the moon up in the eastern sky. It's not full yet, but it's getting there and it was beautiful in a sky quickly fading to dusk.
I smiled to myself as I thought about my old neighbor realizing that he was right on the money. There's not much better that a long walk and a chance to admire Mother Nature.