The wind blew like an hyper child this morning. There were gusts that caught me by surprise almost enough to cause me to lose my footing. I love the wind, but something about the warm air moving that quickly unnerves me a little bit. I think it’s possibly just the knowledge of the extreme heat to come, or maybe there is something inherently mischievous about warm winds, a sentience I can perceive. I prefer a bit of cool air rushing at me.
During my walk I could hear the scissortails chirping in the field on the south side of the road, and my instinct was to say to myself Oh! the scissortails are serenading me on my walk. But then I remembered Alfred Russel Wallace in Papua New Guinea. He had seen the many species commonly known as birds of paradise and remarked:
“I thought of the long ages of the past, during which the successive generations of this little creature had run their course year by year of being born, and living and dying amid these dark and gloomy woods, with no intelligent eye to gaze upon their loveliness—to all appearance such a wanton waste of beauty. Such ideas excite a feeling of melancholy. It seems sad that on the one hand such exquisite creatures should live out their lives and exhibit their charms only in these wild inhospitable regions, doomed for ages yet to come to hopeless barbarism; while on the other hand, should civilized man ever reach these distant lands, and bring moral, intellectual, and physical light into the recesses of these virgin forests, we may be sure that he will so disturb the nicely-balanced relations of organic and inorganic nature as to cause the disappearance, and finally the extinction, of these very beings whose wonderful structure and beauty he alone is fitted to appreciate and enjoy. This consideration must surely tell us that all living things were not made for man. Many of them have no relation to him. The cycle of their existence has gone on independently of his, and is disturbed or broken by every advance in man’s intellectual development; and their happiness and enjoyment, their loves and hates, their struggles for existence, their vigorous life and early death, would seem to be immediately related to their own well-being and perpetuation of the numberless other organisms with which each is more or less intimately connected.” (from The Malay Archipelago, 1869)
I thought of that and how these Texas birds of paradise have no use of me, no urge to sing for me. In fact, on many mornings they might wish I would not disturb their courtships, and they would be correct. They are a decent enough example of a bird that is not necessarily harmed to a great degree by the presence of humans, but neither are they particularly helped. I’ve adopted the image of a scissortail as part of my own business because it is a part of the place where I live, a native part of the ecosystem—evolved to thrive here, and I have a lot of respect for that. So, it’s lovely to hear them chirp to one another at dawn, but I should know my place and stay in it.
My pace continues to improve. During the second mile of this morning’s walk, I was just under 20 minutes per mile, which is my quickest yet. I was stomping down the street for sure, but I never felt like I was overdoing it or racing. I just felt confident in my stride and walked as quickly as I was comfortable. I went to Brush Creek Rd & back, an the only issue with that route is how flat it is, the flattest of my paths. It’s hard to get my heart rate up consistently on the one, but I didn’t have that issue this morning. I thought I had; the strong winds kept my shirt dry, so I was surprised when I finished to see that my heart rate was about the same as yesterday’s when I was just drenched in sweat. That quick pace probably helped.
Protein shakes. What do I do with a protein shake. So, Justin doesn’t love vegetables as much as I do, so an easy way to address that has been to add protein shakes to his daily meal plans. He seems to enjoy them. But I’ve been trying to have them as well (because I won’t ask him to do anything in a meal plan that I won’t do) and I cannot seem to get them to taste quite right… or maybe this is what they always taste like and I just can’t handle it. I enjoy premade things like Soylent or similar products, but mixing protein powder just doesn’t do it for me. I want it to do more for me though, so I’m going to keep trying to find ways to make it work.
[Walk #93]
