Category: Life

Walking. These boots are made for walkin’…

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I don’t stroll. I don’t meander. Or stop to catch-up. Or walk sipping coffee. I don’t sit on park benches contemplating my fate.

Move fast, talk straight, get it done. Next! #BePatient? Ahhhh, no.

Late March. It’s still fresh, oh so very fresh. I’m marching through the Park at 4 a.m., pre-dawn, usual story. Just another morning on the same path I’ve walked a thousand + times. Pitch black.

Kate Fagan: “You just never f****** know what’s going to happen next in this life—okay?

I walk…

These boots are made for walkin’
And that’s just what they’ll do
One of these days, these boots are gonna walk all over you (Nancy Sinatra, 1966)

Nope, I didn’t see it. No sixth sense, no gut intuition, no unconscious memory map of treacherous obstacles.

My toecap catches a large rock, and I’m airborne. Yes, in that split second, it was all in slow motion. Instinctively, the body did respond:

  1. Clutch cameras (PROTECT THE GEAR AT ALL COSTS NO MATTER WHAT DAMAGE TO BODY)
  2. WAIT! Wait just one millisecond. I can’t FACE-PLANT. I twist my right shoulder inward to absorb the blow.
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Lightly Child, Lightly.

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These days I am obsessed by light, it is so hard to commodify. I am not talking about a beautiful dawn, or holidays in the sun, or the light that makes a photograph look good. I am talking about brightness itself, the air lit up. The gleam on the surfaces of my typing hands. I love the gift of its arrival. The light you see is always eight and a half minutes old. Always and again. And you think it is shared by everyone but it is not shared, exactly — our eyes are hit by our own, personal photons.

— Anne Enright, The Wren, the Wren. (W. W. Norton & Company, September 19, 2023) (

Notes:

  • DK Photo 5:05 am Wednesday, June 25 2025. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. More photos from yesterday’s daybreak walk here.
  • Thank you Make Believe Boutique for the Enright passage.
  • Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.

Walking. With Nick…

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3:40 a.m. It’s 67° F.  Overcast skies. Sleeping birds. Dew has made its way from somewhere to the front lawn, my footsteps mark the path behind me to the car.

Here it is — the 1,871th consecutive (almost) day on this early morning walk at Cove Island Park. Like in a row.

With 5 1/2 (!) solid hours of sleep in me, I’m near giddy — there’s almost a spring in my step that has me in a near-stable, upright position, stable as in physicality-only that is.

A Siri alert pops up calling for heavy fog, which lifts the spirit further. It’ll keep park traffic down (so great), and add some appropriate tonality to this Federal Holiday, Juneteenth.

There’s usually three or four of us walkers in the early twilight hours, a fisherman or two, and a runner or two. We all keep to ourselves (mostly all), and keep an eye out for each other, and a suspicious eye on all newcomers (aka interlopers, serial killers, marauders, etc.)

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Saturday Morning

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Every leaf that falls
never stops falling. I once
thought that leaves were leaves.
Now I think they are feeling,
in search of a place—
someone’s hair, a park bench, a
finger. Isn’t that
like us, going from place to
place, looking to be alive?

— Victoria Chang, “Passage” in The Trees Witness Everything (Copper Canyon Press, 2022)

Notes:

  • DK Photo at 4:11 am at Oyster Shell Park, Norwalk, CT. 59° F, with heavy rain. More photos from this morning’s walk here.
  • Poem via Read A Little Poetry

Walking. With God(s).

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Walking, 1,769 consecutive (almost) days in a row at Cove Island Park at Daybreak. Like in a row.

Daylight Savings Time change has brought out the Humans. Strike 1.
It’s high tide. Strike 2.
No clouds. Strike 3.
A trifecta signaling a poor photo day.

I walk.

The morning begins to turn.
Lailah, a shepherd mix, is ahead of me. That’s her in photo above.
She can smell the old guy with candy.
Her Mom struggles to contain her, Lailah’s giddy with full body wiggles and a fluffy white tail frantic with anticipation.

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