{"id":548,"date":"2015-08-15T12:07:27","date_gmt":"2015-08-15T19:07:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/?p=548"},"modified":"2015-08-15T12:07:27","modified_gmt":"2015-08-15T19:07:27","slug":"walking-my-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/?p=548","title":{"rendered":"Walking My Stories"},"content":{"rendered":"

Walking is great exercise. \u00a0Maybe not as great as\u00a0a 10 mile obstacle course in Tahoe<\/a>\u00a0but it’s still great. \u00a0You work the largest muscles in your body without putting excess strain on your joints. \u00a0It’s natural movement. \u00a0It’s good for you.<\/p>\n

But most of the time when I go walking, I’m not doing it for my body. \u00a0I’m doing it for my mind. \u00a0I clear my thoughts. \u00a0I let stress and emotions roll out along my legs and into the ground beneath me. \u00a0I unravel programming knots. \u00a0I contemplate stories. \u00a0I think.<\/p>\n

I take a little bit of time out of every day at work to go and walk. \u00a0It’s the same route, everyday. \u00a0I go out through the back door. \u00a0I cross the parking lot towards the pond between my building and the next. \u00a0I take the path that runs along the stream, that connects the two parking lots. \u00a0Then, I go along the entire outside of the next lot, step over onto the side street, and follow it to the main street. \u00a0A right turn, and then I’m headed back towards my work place. \u00a0It’s just under a mile, with busy freeway on one side, a quiet, verdant pond on the other.<\/p>\n

When I’m not solving a problem in my mind, or working out the details of a story, I try to be in the moment. \u00a0I listen to the cars racing by on Highway 50. \u00a0I look up at the sky, appreciating the cerulean sky and the softness of the clouds. \u00a0I imagine the vastness of space, lying just\u00a0beyond the sky. \u00a0With no roof over my head, there is nothing preventing me from spinning off into the nothing, save for the Earth herself holding me to her surface. \u00a0Holding me by my feet, which I keep lifting and moving away\u00a0from the concrete, like an unruly child squirming away from his mother’s embrace.<\/p>\n

Yesterday, while walking this same route I’ve walked for more than a year and a half, I felt like a character in one of my own stories. \u00a0Details lent itself to narrative. \u00a0If you’ll indulge me a moment, I will share!<\/p>\n

I rounded the corner onto the last street leading back to my office. \u00a0The heat of the afternoon pressed me from all sides, and I felt sweat forming in the middle of my back. \u00a0I chastised myself for not walking earlier in the day, when the temperature would have been more mild.<\/p>\n

As I made the last leg of the trek, I spotted the corpse of a raccoon lying on the grass, near the road. \u00a0It lay on its side, its paws pulled up and its eyes closed, facing me.<\/p>\n

“Oh man,” I said, and turned away quickly. \u00a0I thought for a moment how mild my exclamation was. \u00a0No profanity. \u00a0Then the smell hit me, and my thoughts evaporated. \u00a0I quickened my step.<\/p>\n

As I moved past, I noticed something else out of place. \u00a0Dotting the grass and bushes along my path were dozens of pieces of notebook paper. \u00a0They were empty and lined, though not like typical, college ruled paper.<\/p>\n

The paper littered the ground for a dozen yards or so. \u00a0I’d walked past most of it before my steps began to falter.<\/p>\n

In a cartoon world, an angel and a devil would have appeared on my shoulder.<\/p>\n

“Leave the world better than you found it,”\u00a0the angel would have said.<\/p>\n

“Get back to work,” the devil would respond. “This isn’t your problem.”<\/p>\n

“But it won’t take much to pick up the paper. \u00a0It’s dry.”<\/p>\n

“There are other people who get paid to do this. \u00a0It’s not your job.”<\/p>\n

I turned around. \u00a0The angel doesn’t always win, but I always want him to.<\/p>\n

I walked back to where the paper began. \u00a0I bent and picked it up, then turned to the next. \u00a0Then the next after that. \u00a0The odor from the roadkill struck me again, but I pressed on. \u00a0None of the pages were close to the dead raccoon, and I considered that a blessing.<\/p>\n

A few minutes later, I was back on the path, a stack of blank pages in my hand. \u00a0I went into my office and dumped the pages in the recycling bin. \u00a0I sat at my desk and went back to my programming, feeling like I’d done something small, but right.<\/p>\n

I walk almost every day. \u00a0I don’t write nearly so often. \u00a0I need to write more. \u00a0When I’m not writing, I get depressed. \u00a0I withdraw. \u00a0And apparently, when I go long enough without writing something, I start framing minor events in my life in\u00a0some sort of narrative.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Walking is great exercise. \u00a0Maybe not as great as\u00a0a 10 mile obstacle course in Tahoe\u00a0but it’s still great. \u00a0You work the largest muscles in your body without putting excess strain on your joints. \u00a0It’s natural movement. \u00a0It’s good for you. But most of the time when I go walking, I’m not doing it for my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=548"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":549,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548\/revisions\/549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}