PDY

Let’s face it, everyone was a little nervous about this walk of mine (ours), some more than others. There were a lot of things that could have gone wrong, and of course it is normal to have some fears about some of them actually happening. But the truth is, most, if not all of what we feared never came to be, the worst-case scenarios never happened, and barring any events tomorrow, on Saturday I will be walking into Strawberry Fields. Imagine.

This is so often the case, and collectively, we spend an enormous amount of energy (mostly negative) worrying about things that never happen, and if they do, chances are they didn’t occur exactly the way you thought they would. Fear itself has a very important place in our survival, and it will protect us, but how much of our fear is real and how much of it is imagined? I fear fires, and dark water (as in the ocean at night) and hungry large animals in the wild. Good survival mechanisms I would say. But I could also worry about a lot of other things, all the what ifs, all the potential downfalls, all the way things could go wrong. I could worry about what people are going to decide, what results will be, etcetera, etcetera. I choose not to. This certainly doesn’t mean I don’t care what happens, I do, very much, and I guide myself towards what I think is a favorable place, but consciously try to limit the worrying or nervousness about the outcome.

We think too much, we have that gift, but I see so much of that thought mired in worry. We worry about outcomes, we worry about results, quarterly or otherwise. We have this great ability to create dozens of outcome scenarios, and again, chances are none of them actually unfold as “predicted”. It’s taken a while to shed, but I used to worry a lot, about a lot of things. Then at some point I realized that I was spending a lot of time and energy, better said, wasting a lot of time thinking about stuff that never happened. It’s been a process, old dogs aren’t very good about new tricks, especially if they learned the tricks 50 years ago!

Some of this was prompted by the last couple of days walking through this beautiful part of New Jersey. Truth be told, I have been nervous about this part of the trip. I try to practice what I preach, but being human, don’t always succeed, and this last stretch was frankly causing some angst since I started thinking about this walk. I was determined to cross the George Washington Bridge, but was nervous about getting there. So, I did my homework, asked some questions, figured out what I thought would be the safest route, and then took off. And tonight, safe and sound in Wayne, I think about all the other things I could have been thinking about instead of being nervous about crossing New Jersey, all the things I might have missed. The anxiety was a total waste of energy.

Today was one of the prettiest walks of the trip, even though I was within 20 miles of the GWB. No, I wasn’t walking along the runway at Newark International. Instead, I was yet again walking on country roads through lovely country. It is not quite as rural as before, more of an exurb, not quite suburban. There are tons of trees out here, big beautiful trees. I’ll have to come back some Summer to see what they look like with leaves, but they’re quite stunning without. There are still a lot of animals. Saw two very funny llamas leave the herd and sneak right up to me behind the fence, then run away when I turned around. We played our little game three times - they got bored; I could have played all afternoon.

All this with jets overhead following landing patterns into the New York airports. I am really amazed at the fact that I’m so close but yet so far. And I’m definitely far from waving country! While walking along a beautiful reservoir, a Montville police Tahoe passed me, going in the same direction. So I waved, I always wave at cops, love when they wave back. The officer obviously saw me, for he pulled into a driveway, turned around and pulled up beside me. By then I had gone through my process; sunglasses off, music paused, headphones out, walking stick collapsed. He asked if he could help me, and I said no, was just walking to the city, and then he said “well I saw that you waved and thought you needed help,” to which I said “no, I was just saying hi”. Up went the eyebrow and the “you’re definitely not from around here” look. No problem, gave a little something to giggle about for a couple of miles.

And tomorrow, fearless, I get closer to my bridge. For a couple of miles, I will be walking away from there, but looking forward to a lovely NE New Jersey walk. The weather has been perfect, the sky clear, and the next two days are supposed to be the same. Heavy rain predicted for Saturday night. Very fitting.