On a business trip to Boise Idaho and it is 10:20 pm Wednesday. Bumping around the hotel, don't want to be cooped up in the room and vegging out to the telly.
Boise has a certain charm to it; the main attraction is a greenbelt along the Boise river. This park hugs both sides of the river, running through downtown and into the foothills of the mountains that loom over the town.
Started a stress relieving run after a business meeting, from downtown along the green riverbank and up to a ridge overlooking the town. It is early summer and the daylight is tremendous, a fluorescence unending. The trail is peppered with runners and bikers until I arrive at a golf course; the trail crosses over a road and winds uphill.
No one is on the uphill route. Dusty plants grasp a tenuous hold in the dry dirt; the trail deposits me onto a field of waving wheat-like weeds, swaying in the warm breeze. My mind drifts from thought to thought, then meditates for a while on my son growing up. Yesterday was his last day of 4th grade, and we went to Red Robin to celebrate. He is jacked up and bouncing around the restaurant like a young colt. His attention span is short and conversation leaps from topic to topic; his horizon is limitless. Sometimes a limitless horizon is intimidating though; with no end in sight, it seems the journey will take forever.
And there it is: the perpetual conundrum between journey and destination. Life in the moment and life in eternity.
I am enjoying the heck out of the sun and the warmth; the fragrance of life blooming. If I were a dog I'd be rolling on the ground with sheer exuberance. I wouldn't think of time to leave. But I do; I see the sun descending towards the western horizon and I am getting tired; it is about mile 10 / about age 47. I persevere by looking slightly ahead: "okay make it to that fencepost. Ah, good job Al. Now, let's make it to next year and maybe a graduate degree? Be a good person while you're at it."
But my nature believes in neither good nor bad, does not believe in a moral code. Sometimes it prefers sitting in a bar drinking and eating fatty beef with a harem in attendance. Other times it wants to lay in a summer field, in summer's cauldron with the droning insects. And I am sorely tempted to do just that.
Boise has a certain charm to it; the main attraction is a greenbelt along the Boise river. This park hugs both sides of the river, running through downtown and into the foothills of the mountains that loom over the town.
Started a stress relieving run after a business meeting, from downtown along the green riverbank and up to a ridge overlooking the town. It is early summer and the daylight is tremendous, a fluorescence unending. The trail is peppered with runners and bikers until I arrive at a golf course; the trail crosses over a road and winds uphill.
No one is on the uphill route. Dusty plants grasp a tenuous hold in the dry dirt; the trail deposits me onto a field of waving wheat-like weeds, swaying in the warm breeze. My mind drifts from thought to thought, then meditates for a while on my son growing up. Yesterday was his last day of 4th grade, and we went to Red Robin to celebrate. He is jacked up and bouncing around the restaurant like a young colt. His attention span is short and conversation leaps from topic to topic; his horizon is limitless. Sometimes a limitless horizon is intimidating though; with no end in sight, it seems the journey will take forever.
And there it is: the perpetual conundrum between journey and destination. Life in the moment and life in eternity.
I am enjoying the heck out of the sun and the warmth; the fragrance of life blooming. If I were a dog I'd be rolling on the ground with sheer exuberance. I wouldn't think of time to leave. But I do; I see the sun descending towards the western horizon and I am getting tired; it is about mile 10 / about age 47. I persevere by looking slightly ahead: "okay make it to that fencepost. Ah, good job Al. Now, let's make it to next year and maybe a graduate degree? Be a good person while you're at it."
But my nature believes in neither good nor bad, does not believe in a moral code. Sometimes it prefers sitting in a bar drinking and eating fatty beef with a harem in attendance. Other times it wants to lay in a summer field, in summer's cauldron with the droning insects. And I am sorely tempted to do just that.
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