Gratitude Practice 2021 Day 343: My growing love affair with the Jordan River Parkway Trail
Today and forever I am grateful for the Jordan River Parkway Trail which has completely captured my heart like only a tricky lover can. This hidden treasure stretches and slinks along the length of our fair city and I fall deeper and deeper in love with it each time I visit. Nothing fast or flashy about this romance...we’ve taken it slow and steady...with week to week steady low key encounters... it's been a real old fashioned kind of courtship really...and in time...season after season...I believe our connection to be reciprocal, genuine, and ocean deep. I believe I’ve discovered the long lasting kind of love a girl dreams of...right in my own backyard. This slow moving liquid lover and its endless adjoining trails all located within a short drive from our home have provided a place of solace and respite in every season of the last year and I can’t believe it's taken me until now to explore and appreciate it. Almost weekly, and sometimes several times each week, my little family has visited these trails at one of its various entry points and each time we are delighted and surprised by its offering. Always with the kid on her bike or scooter and with me and Burke happily trailing behind on foot. We walk up and down the trails and back and forth along the banks and somehow end up leaving it all at the river and return home ready and refreshed and rejuvenated and overall clearer and kinder and better versions of us.
Grateful for the guaranteed every time without fail...stillness. Grateful for the wild trees and unruly bushes. Grateful for the strong and confident wall of golden wispy wheat-like willows and for the complicated sharp spikes and thorns of dried up plants that protect and defend the seeds of next year's growth like an overprotective mama sending a strong message to all. Grateful for the hidden and various wildlife that squawk and rustle deep inside the brush.
Grateful for the gentle nods and kind hellos of the small handful of passersby we meet on the trail. No matter when or where we enter the trail, as we casually pass we respectfully acknowledge each other with gentle friendly salutations knowing that we are all part of a small intimate group of super smart secret keepers...those who know and understand the power of this sacred place. It’s like a club...maybe we all consider ourselves grateful lovers...and I'm okay with that.
Grateful for the new stretch we explored today and for the way I fell head over heels in love all over again. Grateful for all of the moments and the memories my little family is making along the banks of this silly river. There is a sweetness in these slow and steady walks that I try to capture with my camera, log deep inside my brain and tuck way deep into my heart knowing that these moments are nothing short of magic. Grateful to love and be loved by these people every single day. And grateful for the miles and miles and weeks and weeks ahead of us along this loving winding path.