I walk a lot these days.

By choice, I walk.  Folks used to stop and offer me rides.  Living in a small town makes it so that many who drive past know me, by sight if not by acquaintance.  I laugh, telling them I’ve got two perfectly good vehicles sitting in my driveway, but would rather use my two perfectly good feet instead.

Usually, they look at me as if I’ve taken leave of my senses (they’re not far wrong) and then, laughing a little, accept my thanks and drive on.  I am grateful for their kindness.

But, I’d rather walk when I can.  This old body needs to move more, anyway.

And, I can see the colors better.

I suppose I could see them from the driver’s seat, but for some reason, the glass and metal of a vehicle seem more like barriers to me than like an invitation to a vista.

Outside works best for viewing outside.

It’s funny.  I used to think the sky was blue, with white clouds and a yellow sun hanging above it all.  Three colors. 

Three.

It’s how I remember drawing every picture I produced as a child.  Every one.  Blue sky—white clouds—yellow sun.  I might have thrown in a brown and green tree if I was feeling unusually painterly on that particular day.

So—five colors.  In an entire landscape. 

Five.

I see more than that when I walk now.  A few more.

I saw the scene captured in the photo above on a recent walk.  It was a spectacular sunset, observed almost by coincidence when I turned a corner. And, I stopped to take the pic, ruining my speed walking time on my smartphone’s app to do it.  Somehow, that doesn’t bother me at all.

Later, my inquiring mind wondered, as I gazed at the photograph, how many colors were present there.  In the sky above my head.  In the ground beneath my feet. I was pretty sure it was more than five.

Information being readily available—at our fingertips, one might say—these days, I did a quick search online to see if it was possible to determine how many colors are visible.

I can’t vouch for the result, but one online app suggests there are 179,423 colors in the original photograph.  That’s more than five.

I like seeing the colors.  There were others on that walk.  Before I turned that corner.

As I walked along the southern border of the field my walking trail curves around, I saw a lovely pink color approaching me.

The little girl’s hair was a beautiful pastel pink.  Seven or eight years old, she pedaled by on her blue bicycle, smiling broadly as she sped past.  I smiled broadly right back at her.

It wasn’t only the girl and her colors that made me smile.  Even before she reached me on the trail, I heard the sound from her spokes.  And the playing card.

When the little girl passed me, she wasn’t riding past a sixty-something-year-old man.  She couldn’t have told you, but it was a little boy just her age she met on the trail that evening.

I can’t tell you how many times we did it.  My mom would have had a better idea of the number of times she yelled at us for stealing her clothespins.  The clothespins were to hold the cards to the bicycle frame just adjacent to the spinning wheel spokes.  I think the little girl used scotch tape, but we used clothespins.  Sometimes, Mom got them back.  Sometimes.

Plup-plup-plup-plup-plup-plup-plup-plup-plup. 

The faster we rode, the louder and more motor-like it became.  We weren’t on bicycles.  We were on a motorcycle, flying along the asphalt.  For miles, the plup-plup-ing sounded in our ears.

Oh, the memories! 

But, the little girl and her time machine streaked on down the fitness trail, leaving an old man in her wake.  The sound became softer and softer until there was nothing but echoes of a lifetime ago in my ears.

I headed north toward my house and a waiting easy chair.  But, still straining my ears for the fluttering of the playing card in the spokes, I turned one more corner—back toward the west—toward the empty field between—to see if I could catch a few more seconds of the lovely rhythm.

I didn’t.  But, I did see the spectacular sunset you see above. 

I turned the corner.

This afternoon, as I sat mulling over the chance meeting on the trail and the subsequent vista of a Creator’s handwork, I remembered that I had a book due at the library today.  I knew the Lovely Lady had some to return as well, so I suggested we leave soon.

She, working on one of her crochet projects, replied, “Just let me turn this corner and I’ll be ready to go.”

The words took on a different meaning in my head as I waited. We sometimes use the phrase to mean a life change—a momentous event.  Perhaps, even a life-saving change.

“She’s turned the corner and will be released from the hospital soon.”

“He turned a corner and is going a completely direction in life.”

Sometimes, it takes every bit of strength we can muster to turn those kinds of corners.

Frequently though, turning the corner takes nothing more than a simple ninety-degree change in direction.  One moment, we’re headed up the same road we’ve been on forever (seemingly) and the next, the scenery has changed completely, looking nothing like the destination we envisioned when we left home.

I like surprises.  Good ones, anyway.

I love the colors along the road.  And, sometimes away from the beaten path.

Maybe it’s time to take the slow way home.  Perhaps, we could even turn a corner we’ve never turned until today.

There are colors out there we’ve never seen before.  I’m sure of it.

And, there might be some sounds we’ve been missing, even though we didn’t know it.

I wonder if we could turn some corners together.  Slowly.

Are you coming with?

 

“Look, I am about to do something new.
Now it begins to happen! Do you not recognize it?
Yes, I will make a road in the wilderness
and paths in the wastelands.”
(Isaiah 43:19, NET)

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.”
(from The Road Less Traveled, by Robert Frost)

© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2024. All Rights Reserved.