Walking Distractions

Not-very-prickly plant

I often use tricks to get my mind off difficult or long parts of walks. For instance, when I am walking up the steep section of hospital hill I often find myself counting steps between the sidewalk breaks, one-two…break… one-two-th…break…one-two…break…one-two-three…break…one-two-thr…break. Sometimes I think I sense a pattern in my steps and how often the sections end and just about when I think I have it figured out, I am at the top of the hill. What? Oh, that wasn’t so hard.

Distracting yourself during a walk is definitely not a new thing. I bet that’s why soldiers came up with those marching songs. “Left, left, left, right, left,… I left my…” I can’t remember any now, but I remember singing some as a kid, and making plenty up. And I do remember plenty of times singing, “the ants came marching one-by-one, hurrah, hurrah…” during a long walk. Or “Knick, knack paddy whack give a dog a bone, this old man came marching home…”- how does the rest go? Or just giggling with friends made those long walks go by fast.

In the wilds searching for different things- dinosaurs, heart-shapes, butterflies, shiny rocks- has helped us on our hikes. My son use to pretend he was in Jurassic Park and would hide from the pretend dinosaurs. Other times he would get tired, or I would, and would need a distraction. “Let’s find a shiny rock,” I might say. And in the land of red sandstone that’s a challenge, so it would keep us occupied for awhile. Now he walks so fast I have a hard time keeping up with him. I am the one left needing distractions. “Let’s find a non-prickly plant,” and in the desert, that might take awhile.