For years, I wore an iPod every time I walked Bruce the Dog. If I was in a good mood, I'd catch up on the news or The American Life. On a bad day, I'd rock out.
But over the past few months, I've taken to walking iPodless. I need that hour of solitude to think, to sort out the daily shit storm that is a divorce. Yet, now that I've moved into my beach shack, the dynamic of the walk has changed once again. 90% of my constitutional with Bruce now takes place along the ocean which, for me, has always been a place of great clarity. For those four dozen-odd minutes, I can see the waves crashing and the surfers surfing. I can smell the salt, burning sand and seaweed. It washes the post-marital flotsam and jetsam from my psyche. I feel good.
So suddenly, with neither stress nor earbuds clogging my brain, I see and hear things I've never registered before. The ramps down to the bike path would make an excellent skateboard slalom, despite the giant, red signs stating the contrary. The waves at Avenue C are half the size of the waves in either direction, but no one ever surfs there, so I will. There's a woman who walks at roughly the same time I do and refers to her dog as "Sandwich."
Yesterday, we were walking in the dirt next to the sidewalk -- because Bruce likes his dirt -- when a gopher popped out of the ground in front of us. I've never seen a wild gopher before. Clearly, he hadn't expected visitors. You could almost see the exclamation point leaping from his skull as he ducked back down. I turned to a woman walking close by and said, "Hey! Look! A gopher!"
She hadn't noticed and she didn't respond. She was wearing an iPod.
I wonder how many gophers I've missed over the years.
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Comments
Nice post.