Lifted My Spirits

Sunlit Forest – Photo: L. Weikel

I’m so relieved that the weather today was as bright and warm as it was. I needed it. It lifted my spirits.

I can’t figure out why I was feeling so down today. The Memorial Day weekend was pleasant enough. I missed seeing our kids, but there have been other holidays, pre-Covid-19, when we weren’t able to get together. So it’s not as if it felt like the gaping hole in our summer opening extravaganza that I know other people experienced.

And we did manage to walk every day, despite initial calls for rain. Thank goodness!

Today was hard, though.

Ugly Out There

The best I can figure is that I’m starting to feel a bit overwhelmed by all the ugliness ‘out there.’

Last night, just before settling down to write about my love of Ents, I saw the video of the woman in Central Park, who earlier yesterday rabidly threatened to call 911 to report a man who was taking video of her breaking the leash law in an area devoted to birding. I’m sure most of you know all about her very obvious use of her white privilege to threaten this man for daring to video her flaunting the park rules.

It sickened me to see how she treated this man.

And then there’s the horrific story of the man in Minneapolis who was murdered by police officers, one of whom literally had his knee on the man’s neck as the man cried out that he couldn’t breathe. I could not bring myself to watch the video of that incident. Merely seeing the still shot of the cop with his knee on the man’s neck was enough to make me want to throw up. This type of stuff happens every day. Almost always with impunity, although apparently – hopefully – not this time. But it all makes me wonder how black and brown people do not despair of such cruelty. How do any of us not despair of this cruelty to one another?

So no, I’m not going to link to either of these videos. If you haven’t seen them, they are pretty much everywhere. Which may be why I was feeling more and more depressed today as the day wore on.

Between those two incidents and the videos of people spitting on or verbally abusing clerks who were trying to enforce mask use in their stores, or people deliberately defying public health recommendations… I don’t know. I just felt profoundly sad over the state of humanity.

Took a Walk

So Karl and I took another one of our walks. I’m sharing a couple photos I took. The beauty we encountered was heartening and peaceful. Once again, walking lifted my spirits. Once again, Mother Earth reminded me of the beauty that surrounds us if we take the time and make the effort to look for it.

As usual, walking brings me peace. Here’s a recent article reinforcing just how and why walking is so great for us – especially now.

I’m going to keep on walking. If you haven’t walked in a while, I urge you to go for it. It helps. And we all need all the help we can get right now.