Boots on the Trail

“The present is who I am, just the way I am right now. And it is precious.” Spencer Johnson, The Precious Present.

This Memorial Day weekend, with boots on the trail, we experienced the precious present. For the first time, during this COVID-19 quarantine we were allowed to hike the local parks.

In Carlsbad, CA. we’re fortunate, we have a 110-acre, picturesque hiking spot, Calavera Hills Nature Preserve.

The morning was crisp and cool; the sky blue with patches of fluffy white clouds overhead. Once we hit the trail, a quiet solitude came over me: my mind began to wander, and my senses took flight.

Sounds - sights, and smells. The rhythm of my hiking poles tapping the rocks, the plodding of my boots against the good earth, the whistling of the birds, the trickle of running water, and the sweet smells of the grass. My mind recalling bits and pieces of words that expressed my gratitude for the experience. I wanted desperately to write them down but was driven to just to keep walking, no hurry, just calm, rhythmic steps forward.

So, this morning, the question was, “How to put all this into words?”

This compelled me to reach for an old book from my library, Walden by Henry David Thoreau and I read the following passage:

“When we perceive sights, sounds, and textures, we are not standing as disembodied consciousness apart from a world of inanimate mechanisms; rather, we are sentient beings immersed in the sensory world, learning the “essential facts of life” only through “the perpetual instilling and drenching of the reality that surrounds us.” (Walden).

The perception of truth “produces a pleasurable sensation, a healthy and refined nature would always derive pleasure from the landscape.” (Thoreau’s Journal).

Well said, sir - the truth is timeless. And what better way to express gratitude than to honor and share the wisdom of those who came before us in recognition.

Another timeless philosopher that expressed the present so well was Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his essay Self-Reliance he said,

“There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given him to till.”

“The power which resides in him is new in nature and none, but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.” – Emerson

So, my listening friends, as our confinement is slowly lifted take time to get outdoors and like so many before you get your boots on the trail.

This is Patrick Ball. Thanks for listening. See you in the next episode.

Comments

When Fear Becomes the Default

In this special episode, When Fear Becomes the Default. Early Sunday morning, I was cycling past a small veterans’ pocket park in San Marcos. The air was still, the streets nearly empty. On one corner stood a young woman, alone, holding a hand-painted sign that read: “Be ANGRY. ICE agents are murdering people.” I pedaled past, but the words stayed with me. I knew the context—the footage and headlines from Minneapolis the day before, already ricocheting through the country and hardening opinions. Even in the quiet of the ride, the noise followed. Two miles later, I stopped at a red light. A black car with dark windows pulled up inches from my bike. My heart jumped. My first instinct wasn’t neighbor —it was threat . I found myself bracing, scanning, and wondering if the person inside was angry, armed, or looking for trouble. Then the door opened. A well-dressed young woman stepped out, walked to the trunk, and pulled out a sign that read “Open House.” She turned, smiled brightly, and sa...

The Language of Home: Building a Sanctuary

This episode is for anyone trying to find their footing in a new place—whether it’s a new city, a new job, or a new country. The light in Florence, Italy, has a way of making everything feel like a Renaissance painting—the golden hue on the stone, the steady rhythm of the Arno River, and the feeling that you are walking through a history much larger than yourself. I was there to give a presentation to a class of Gemology students. I was prepared to discuss color grading and refractive indices, but not to be outed as a language tutor . Feeling very much like a guest in a storied land, a hand shot up enthusiastically. "You’re the guy on the podcasts," the young woman said, her eyes bright with recognition. "You’re the one teaching us English." I laughed nervously. If you know my flat Midwestern accent, you know the irony here. I am hardly an Oxford professor. But later, as I wandered the cobblestone streets beneath the shadow of the Duomo, the humor faded into a powe...

Practiced Hands: The 50-Year Warranty

What Doc Burch Taught Me About Staying Active. We talk a lot about "life hacks" these days, but most of them don’t have a very long shelf life. Usually, they’re forgotten by the next app update. But back in 1972, I received a piece of advice that came with a 50-year warranty. It’s the reason I’m still on my bike today, still chasing a golf ball around Carlsbad, and still—mostly—in one piece. The Kick That Changed Everything It started with a literal kick in the pants. A kid at school in Cuba, Illinois, was joking around and caught me just right. By the next morning, my lower back was screaming. My mom didn’t reach for the Tylenol; she reached for her car keys. "Let’s go see Doc Burch," she said. "He’ll fix you right up." Harry E. Burch, D.C., was a fixture in Lewistown. He’d graduated from Palmer College in ’59 and had been our family’s go-to for years. He was a man of practiced hands and steady eyes. After a quick exam and an X-ray, the mood in the room s...

Sweden Called . . . They Said No.

Have you ever wondered about the Nobel Prize? Let's look at Where Genius Meets “Wait—Where’s My Medal?” Every October, the Nobel Prizes are announced, and humanity pauses to celebrate the "greatest benefit to mankind." And every year, like clockwork, a specific type of person appears online to complain—at length—that they were robbed. (Well, maybe this year more than most.) The Origin: A Legacy of Guilt The prize exists because Alfred Nobel, a Swedish inventor, had a crisis of conscience. Nobel held 355 patents, but he was most famous for inventing dynamite. When a French newspaper mistakenly published his obituary, calling him the " Merchant of Death, " he decided to buy a better legacy. In his 1895 will, he left the bulk of his massive fortune to establish five prizes (Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature, and Peace). Because he was Swedish, he entrusted the selection to Swedish institutions, such as the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. The only outlier...

On The Fly

Search This Blog