I guess it's just a good day for a hike. At first, of course, the inner voices clamor with a thousand questions, all the uncompleted tasks of this crazy hectic season. I let them speak and then dissolve into the enchanting rhythmic hum of the trail, my sneakers' quiet swish through the snowmelt-moistened soil, hushed breath. And yes, there's something in the force of wintered legs slowly remembering the good fire of this upward movement, the press of muscles left still for too long. Moving through the quiescent interplay of shadow and sunlight on the eastern treeslope, suddenly my eyes are open, my ears and lungs and veins and pores, and these weeks of winter begin slowly to fall away, to crumble and crack, sloughing off like curlicues of peeling paint, like a snake's brittle skin.
Athletes describe a meditative peace arisen from the subtle rhythms of the body's movements.
Easing into this 'dreamtime,' the rhythms of earth and air begin to ease the ego's grasp on the brain, allowing our thoughts to roam untethered. There's clarity and new perspective in this egoless walking-state, when we begin to transcend those layers of defense and planning, all the fragments of a life by habit and design. Now the tension of inarticulable work miseries slide from my forehead like sunscreen-slippery sweat. I'm clambering about the sloping crosstrail boulders, and I'm looking at the sky brushed with clouds like powdered sugar on turquoise marzipan. And as I round the last bend, the low sun haloes through the frosted brush-and now I'm at the hilltop.