Every week, I go to the nearby town of Canton, Ohio, to get water from a spring where hundreds of local folks also get their water.
Today, instead of simply filling my glass jugs and leaving, I thought to explore the area -- a riverfront where I’d often noticed people walking and jogging.
I pulled around to a parking lot, got out of my car and began to walk the manmade path with everybody else. But then I noticed a path into the forested hills beyond the asphalt.
And that’s the path I took.
Except for the rough-cut paths and the occasional sawed log, the forest seemed untainted by humans. Chipmunks skittered, unafraid, across the path in front of me. An inordinate number of songbirds flitted from tree to tree, singing as they went. I even saw what appeared to be a wild, abandoned kitten. She seemed no more than six months old. Grey and curled into herself as she was, I thought she was a rabbit.She looked up at me from her ball of fur and scampered into the weeds, too fast for my camera.
I was surprised to find nobody else here: The place was so beautiful, so serene, so natural and meandering, one sun-dappled path gently leading to another and another. I felt my pulse slow as I experienced majestic trees and wildflowers guiding me, my camera lens and my hungry soul.
I meandered back and forth along the many paths, up, up, up into the wildflower-dotted hills as if I were in the true Appalachian mountains of my youth that I long for sometimes.
I came upon aster red-painted steps leading ever higher into the hills.
I came upon a stream crossed by a curved wooden bridge.
Still, there was nobody but me to echo and relish the silence. In rare and perhaps longed-for solitude, I walked along the stream and across it. I took more photos, and then down the other side where I saw a large field of lilies.
As I approached the lilies, I began seeing other manmade structures. I saw an arbor and stone paths, a bench, landscaped flower gardens flowers, a butterfly garden, a bell tower, and the sign, "Canton Gardens."
I stayed here in this place for an hour or more that day, marveling at the lovely things that can happen when my feet take me where they will.
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I delighted in the discoveries I can make when I have no provocation or agenda.
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I felt awe, pure, childlike delight and joy at what can happen when I allow myself to wander.
