Through the narrow path in the nearby park, a semi-circle that crowns my walk, the trees are leaning in and damp with dew. It’s late spring now, past peak, broken petals brought down by an overnight rain. I come to clear my head and clean out my thoughts, to separate one day from the next. Each walk is different, though the route’s always the same. Gray surface on the lake, angled trees on the far side. A sometimes eagle, rare heron, commonplace ducks and crows. But the park is no longer mine, it’s the season of the tourist now: local teenagers, anglers, people with canoes. It happens one day in September when the weather turns and I know I’ll have it all to myself again. My friend Walt Walker says that consciousness isn’t something we possess, but something we enter into: and the lake for me is the same.

Categories: prose, writing

Tags: consciousness, Memoir, mindfulness, nature therapy, pacific northwest, prose, short form, Walt Walker, William Pearse writer