My get-up-and-go got-up-and-went.
Bags packed, shoes on, heart empty on where I’ve been and filled up on where we were going and there’s a pause on the play. California will remain my temporary home for another two months.
Today, I had to challenge myself. I’ve been here. I’ve done it. Seen it. Isn’t that what we think? As I paced the floor, wearing in my misery so deep that I seem to walk in a slope now, I thought perhaps I needed to get out. Taking my camera, I climbed the same hill I’ve climbed a hundred times in the last 5 months, only this time I decided to do it with my eyes open.
How is it we can walk past something, something as familiar as our front door, but never really take it in? One of my friends lives in a neighboring canyon filled with steps hidden in bougainvillea draped tunnels that she daily climbs for exercise. I’ve lamented the emptiness of my canyon, seen it as a paltry hill compared with her lush mountaintop oasis. Imagine my surprise today, while climbing my beaten beast of dirt with my camera, to find not one, but 5 hidden stair channels weaving through the hillside like veins in a petal.
I’ve been here, but I haven’t really been here. I haven’t seen everything I can, even within feet of my door. So, I am looking at this time now as a gift. To memorize, blueprint, capture this one tiny hill in the world.
