New Walks

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Since we have already established my reputation as a high stim person, it will come as no shock to you that when I walk I seek out a different route every day.  I  wake up and immediately obsess about how far I want to drive to get to this walk, and what terrain I am in the mood to deal with.  If I am lucky, I have someone to go with me.  I find walking with a friend makes the miles go easier and I go further if I have company

Last weekend was Poet's walk, and this weekend I took a good 2-3 mile walk along Hurley Mountain Road which runs by acres of cornfields.  It is a lovely walk with a combo of sun and shade, and you pass sweet farms, bee hives and acres of corn surrounded by purple loosestrife.  The road is not very wide, and what I did not take into account was the fact that it is harvest time and there were tons of tractors and tractor trailers hauling the corn harvest out of the fields.   


Sunday morning was a stroll along the Rondout Creek.  The city of Kingston put in a wonderful walkway that starts at Rositas and ends up on Abeel street. Round trip is about a mile.  I love that I am in a totally different world down on the creek, the stone walkway lined with boats of all shapes and sizes, as well as lethargic ducks who lay on the docks, nonplussed by the passing humans.

When you walk you get to see things that you would never see riding in a car;  the charisma of old abandoned buildings from a hundred years past,  the interaction of a seagull with a group of ducks.I have laughed at wild turkeys running through a field, and waved to the migrant workers in the corn fields.  I feel sun and shade, cool and burning heat.  I smell the earth, the creek and the blacktop.All senses engage, and some of these journeys become my paintings where I portray that moment in time or in my life,  and hope that it stirs a memory in the heart for someone as well as for me.

And - there are the days that I do yoga, go into my body and my heart for a different experience.
Off to paint.

Patti

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