It’s funny to me what little things trigger random memories for me.

I took a walk this morning, my second walk this week. I’m doing good since it’s only Tuesday. I’m enjoying the “crisp” (albeit muggy) summer Florida mornings. I normally just take a walk around the block, I’m guessing a little less than a mile. I enjoy walking my neighborhood because of the many trees surrounding and the variety of houses in my subdivision. (I wrote about that here.)

Sometimes I get so used to doing things the usual way that I don’t usually stray from that. There is some comfort in normalcy, but sometimes I think I need to mix things up a bit, even in simple things like my walks. There are other roads and routes to explore, and I rarely seem to try. This morning I did.

There’s a park within a block of my house. It’s got a playground (perfect for visiting nephews), picnic tables, big fields, and a baseball diamond. I’ve explored it before, and shortly after moving in, Drew and I took a stroll down there one evening and enjoyed the swings. But other than that, I usually just walk right by it. This morning, I didn’t.

It was quiet this morning, as I guess most people aren’t running to go sliding or play baseball at 7 in the morning. Birds were chirping and crows were squawking. I walked by the quiet playground and onto the dewey grass. A quaint little bridge crosses over a waterless stream. Something that cute just beckons me, so I walked over it, right through a spider web. (And it struck me as I hit it… we get so annoyed by that, but I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the poor spider whose hard work had just been destroyed. But I digress…) I continued to walk through the field, over to a bunch of trees. There was a small trail that led through the trees, and things like that beckon me as well. I walked through the trees, destroyed more spiders’ hard work, and emerged on the other side facing the baseball diamond. I traipsed back up the field toward the playground and the exit.

There’s not much to the park and not much else to explore. But as I walked through the field and felt the dew seeping through my sneakers and getting my pant leg wet, for some reason I was taken back to tour. Now, it might simply be that my brain is tour oriented right now as I’m reading through old tour journals (AND I got a stack of letters from my kids yesterday! Yay!). But in that particular moment, I was taken back to my many morning walks I took while on tour. I stayed with diverse host families in various neighborhoods, and I would try to walk in as many as I could. New places to explore (and get lost). New sights and sounds. Early morning quiet. Peacefulness. It helped my crazy, frantic tour life to have a few moments where I could take some deep breaths.

It was kind of nice to reminisce on that.