Walking

I walked a little yesterday.

I find comfort in walking the empty roads cutting through the sage and mixed grass near my house.  I admire a sun—like the one often standing above me here—that is not afraid to cast a hard shadow.

I don’t need much.  On most days, a single eagle slowly spiraling up into the sky within an updraft is enough.

Both essential and exquisite, that.  

I have found a certain beauty in everyplace I have been so far in my life.  But give me first the open land.  Give me the long expanse of unchecked prairie aspiring to become foothills, and then snow-capped mountains.  That is exactly where I want to walk.

—Mitchell Hegman