Counterclockwise
When I reached the loop trail yesterday, I went right instead of left. I thought I would walk farther, cross the road, stride all the way to the end. But that proved impractical. No matter, though. I had set the course. I would be walking counterclockwise. Everyone I passed was going the other way.
It felt fresher than I thought it would, fleshing out the flip side of a familiar trail. The low light touched the treetops in new ways. The path curved in all the wrong places. The woods spread out on either side, limitless in their lack of familiarity.
Why don’t I do this more often, choose the road less traveled? Is it habit, or a need to keep one way fresh? The second one, I think. So next time, it will be clockwise again.
2 thoughts on “Counterclockwise”
Thanks for this post, Anne! It reminds me, both from my tracking (search & rescue) days and, more recently, working with people who are visually impaired, that the route back from any given place — when one’s route is done in reverse — is effectively much more like a brand new journey than it is a simple ‘retracing of steps’!
That’s exactly it, Matt! Like a brand new journey. Thanks for reading and commenting.