Slow down, take a walk instead.

Sometimes, it is the unfamiliar that is more comforting. How surprisingly satisfying it can be to nod at a stranger, watch kids unknown to you, play in a park, and walk an untrodden path.

It was this craving to be away from the familiar, my very own people and things, that took me out - along a bush walk trail, near our suburb. Called the ‘Callicoma walk’ within the Berowra Valley Regional Park, it is a 1 hr 45 mins trail. From home it makes for a good 2 hour walk. I didn’t go all the way to the end (Thornleigh), but did 3/4th of it and have come back with so many sights and sounds in my head, that its enough to make world peace :). Sandstone rocks, ferns, creeks, little birds, huge tall trees, lizards, and a favourite playlist on my iphone were my only company.

Next time this world irks you no end, just set off. Take a walk, literally. Nothing can beat a good walk.

Here are glimpses from my little hike.

Taken with my phone. Not great quality images, but good enough for a keepsake memory.

‘I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in’.  ~John Muir, 1913, in L.M. Wolfe, ed., John Muir, John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir, 1938