A WALK IN OUR NEIGHBORHOOD

A Walk in our Neighborhood with A New Companion

by Diane Ference
T oday I walked my local trails accompanied by a newcomer to my city. This was her first walk in years as she had relocated to Maryland from Texas and had given up walking for quite a while. She had ventured out as a New Year's Resolution -- determined to hit the trail and meet the people in her newly settled home state of Maryland. This was her first visit to the trails of Columbia MD and three of us (myself and two friends) had welcomed her and volunteered to accompany her on her first 10km event in our state.
The many times I have walked these bike trails through the east side of Columbia MD, I had become quite nonchalant about the surroundings and had stopped appreciating the beauty of my neighborhood. Our companion's interest and delight at the isolation and solitude of our trails as well as their beauty as we walked by a trickling stream was evident in her comments. It made me look closer at what I was passing and really appreciate the serene setting that our city planners had provided when they built the bike paths throughout the once rural countryside that became Columbia MD.
Many of us curse our winding roads and dead end cul de sacs whenever we try to drive the communities in search of a new address. But as pedestrians, the quiet roads and lack of traffic is welcome as we criss cross the villages in search of our next lake or pond to visit.
Many times our new walking friend stopped to admire the lake view or the ducks or the streams cascading over the rocks or the trail on a very old road that had been abandoned in the expansion of our developments, all places that we as old timers have taken for granted and overlooked as we have seen it many times. Looking at our surroundings through her eyes made us approeciate it just a bit more than we used to, and the walk was made more enjoyable by her wonder at the beauty of my hometown.
If you want to add life to your walks, take a new friend and take the time to look as you walk. Forget timing yourself or rushing to finish your exercise. You might be pleasantly surprised at what you experience. I was!!