Yesterday, as an experiment, I tried one of my regular walks at an irregularly slow pace. It wasn’t easy, but I promised myself I would do it, so I did.

The route was a familiar one, just two miles round trip. It took me most of an hour — that’s how leisurely I was ambling. It was the pace of a hiker struggling up a mountain, but my trail was mostly level ground.

A pair of young runners rushed by, then a lone jogger in a white jacket. Everyone passed me. But I plodded on at my slow gait.

Being a Kentucky girl, I remembered that the term “slow gait” can be an official one for the artificial gait of the American Saddlebred horse. It means that each of the horse’s feet strikes the ground separately in a measured, steady and highly stylized way. Not at all the way that I was moving!

Though my feet dawdled, my mind roamed far and wide, an inverse relationship. Maybe “not so fast” should be my walking mantra more often.