That is One Strange Looking Santa Claus

I wonder how many of my neighbors watch me walk a garbage bag full of trash to the dumpster almost every morning.

I wonder how many of them think I’m crazy when I carry a bag of trash over my shoulder looking like a skinny, hooded Santa Claus who has fallen on hard times instead of simply driving it to the dumpster.

Seriously, though, are people really judging me on my trash bag habits?

Don’t people have better things to do?

And then I remember how I laugh at the people driving around with the trash bag on their hood or the trunk of their car.

Or how irritated I get at the neighbors who leave their bags outside their front door for a roach, rat, and raccoon buffet.

So, yeah, people probably think I’m weird.

But let me tell you why I walk the trash out instead of driving.

I do it because I can—because there was a time when I was so sick I couldn’t walk the trash to the car let alone the twelve hundred steps to the dumpster and back.

I do it because friends and family once had to make special trips to my place just to take out the trash for me.

I do it because little things count.

I do it because I know how blessed I am to be able to walk.

This morning, I decided to walk the Wetlands instead of driving.  There are just too many people there these days to be able to drive without getting road rage.  And road rage seems like it might defeat the purpose of coming to the Wetlands for peace and contemplative time with God.

And honestly, the pictures I get while walking are a million times better than the ones I get from the car.

I would never have spotted the purple gallinule from the car this morning.

I hadn’t seen him since that very first time a few weeks ago, but this morning, as I walked close to the marsh where I had spotted him before, I noticed that striking purple head and candy-corn beak.  There was no missing him.

From the car, I never would have been able to get the best angle to capture the Great Egret in flight, high up in the sky.

From the car, I would have had to lean far into the passenger seat and deal with a shaking hand and rumbling engine to get a picture of the Sandhill Crane peeking at me from behind the skeletal branches.

I would never have been able to see the Black-crowned Night Herons far away from their normal hiding places among the reeds, swoop down from the sky to land high up in the trees.

I would not have heard the German tourists gasping at the size of an alligator mostly submerged in the water.

I was tired this morning.

It would have been easier to drive.

My legs wobbled as I walked and a few times I didn’t trust my feet on the uneven ground.

But the temperature was perfect, the wind light.

There were no mosquitoes.

And all I could feel was God’s blessing.