Lazy Retirement

I have been luxuriating on my balcony in the Winter sunshine and writing , finishing stories begun once upon a time but left unfinished.

Retirement Lesson 3. Time is a wonderful gift. Making the most of the gift however requires not worrying backwards and not worrying forwards.

STORY 1 - She is unstoppable.

It was the last stage of the walk and she felt a subtle, growing jubilation at her achievement. High in the flat topped mountains, her long hair was thrown about her face by the buffeting winds and she glimpsed the waving grasses, pale green and faded by the hot summer sun, through its wild dark curtain. She loved the swift sureness of her tread across the landscape and when resting, admired her tanned and muscular legs in their dusty simple sandals. She had begun this journey in trekking boots, the one large expense of her preparations however had discarded these on perhaps the third day as huge blisters bloomed across her heels and several toes.

Now she walked in the rubber sandals, made up of a heavy base attached with Velcro straps around the back of her heel and across the top of her foot. They seemed barely there and occasionally she slipped into the fantasy that she was walking barefoot and somehow free across this landscape. She felt at these times, the truth of her own spirit and for long moments she felt elemental and raw.

She found it was difficult to be with others on the trail and she discouraged any overtures, not wanting the mundane to impact her energy . Someone had once, at another time completely unrelated and long ago, commented on the joy they had seen in her face as they had watched her walking a city street. She thought of that day and the comment and felt the same suffusing pleasure that she had been experiencing then. She mused on the warmth that joy brings, idly noticing that the french woman were again ducking into the bushes ostensibly to pee. She assumed that was the reason although had been startled to discover that sex was a back story for many on the walk and had occasionally been confronted by couples rising dustily from ditches, rumpled and vague. Naively she had not connected the sacred and spiritual with the sexy.

Caught up in her musings on this issue she was startled when in a whirlwind of flapping clothing , two woman moved in close to her, one on each side.” Papillon, Papillon ” they screeched pointing to her feet before hastening past her. Later whilst walking with a German engineer who had accompanied the woman for most of the morning, she recounted the experience, nonplussed by the excitement her feet had generated. “It means butterfly” he stated gently pointing at the tattoo on her heal . ” We have been following your flight “