I Found Another Way

Unforced Movement
Moving without trying to improve anything.

I went out knowing the trailhead would still be closed.

It’s a holiday. Sunday.

No one working.

I thought there might be a way around it.

There wasn’t.

I stood there for a while.

Longer than I needed to.

Looking at the fencing.

Feeling like it wasn’t fair.

Wondering what they were doing to my trailhead.

How they could just close it off.

I caught myself.

It isn’t mine.

I stayed there a little longer anyway.

Then I turned.

I thought about walking up to the other open entrance.

Instead, I went the other direction.

A path we noticed a few days ago.

It runs along a deep cut in the ground.

You can tell water moves through it from large cement pipes under the street.

But it was dry.

No sign of water.

I wasn’t sure when it had last been there.

I went down into it.

Trees grew up from the bottom.

On the other side, fences lined the backyards of houses.

Dogs came running down toward me.

Barking.

When I said hi, they stopped.

Turned.

Went back up the yard.

I kept walking.

At one point, I looked up.

The sky was a bright, almost artificial blue.

Like something I would use in a drawing.

Then I caught my toe on something small.

A stem in the path.

I didn’t fall.

But it was enough.

I started watching my steps more closely.

Looking down.

The path curved.

Then it started to rise.

I realized it connected back up on the other side.

Different houses.

Different fences.

It felt like something new.

Something I hadn’t used before.

I felt a small kind of excitement.

Like I had found something.

No bikes passing.

Just dogs behind fences.

And small things in the path you could miss if you weren’t looking.

It felt like a place I could come back to.

Not mine.

But close enough.