Avid Indoorsman

I heard someone describe himself that way once, and it made me laugh, because that’s exactly how I would have described myself this time last year.  My favorite season of the year is winter.  It would be fall, if Austin had a fall, but as we all know, what most people consider summer weather drags well into November here.   And my favorite kind of weather has always been cold and rainy.  And my favorite venue is indoors – watching the natural world from a safe and climate-controlled distance, reading, going to movies, working…..you will never find me on a tennis court at 2:00 in the afternoon, I promise you. 

But something has changed.  When I woke up this morning, to what has to be the most beautiful day of the year, I COULD NOT WAIT to get outside and start my walk.  No pressure to get it out of the way, no hurry to do it while there was still some coolness in the air.  I just wanted to be outside. 

his morning I drank my coffee out on my patio.  At lunchtime, it was still nice and cool, so I had my lunch out there as well.

Is it possible that, just as my body is now used to being put through five miles a day, it also craves regular contact with the outdoors?

I don’t think you’ll every completely change the way you’re bent, but it makes me very happy to think that perhaps I’ve started accessing something in me that’s been closed off.  I have now gone through two seasons – winter and spring – as a regular outdoor participant, and I can assure you that I experience a field of wildflowers very differently when I’m walking through it and trying to get Banks to pose for a picture in it, than I do merely driving by it.

What’s next?  Rock climbing?  Bird-watching?  Let’s not get carried away here.  But it’s been less than four months, and I can already feel some kind of deep, and I hope permanent, shift inside of me.

But let me put in a plug for an indoor activity -- Salmon Fishing in the Yemen was funny and charming and beautiful, and Ewan was his wonderful self.  Very much worth catching.