And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye
clear. What we need is here.
– from Wendell Berry’s “The Wild Geese”
It’s funny how sometimes you can go for years living in a place before you learn certain things about it. I lived for a year in a town in Maryland, wishing for a good breakfast place. Might I add that once you move out of the metro New York area, trying to find a bagel or pizza place that satisfies cravings for either of those can feel impossible. Imagine my surprise, then, to learn after moving to another town that the first had the best bagels around.
Sometimes those place-based oversights are accidental, things you just didn’t notice in the moment or didn’t have cause to pay attention to. But sometimes those oversights could be remedied with a little exploration. I didn’t look too hard for a good, local bagel place, for example. I sort of just assumed that if one was there, it would present itself, and voila, breakfast! I should have looked harder.
Likewise, I’m learning I would do well to pay closer attention to local trails. My tendency is to rely on old standbys when I want a good hike, and they often take some effort to get to. But once again, the best bagels might be right around the corner.
Mongtomery County, MD, has more than 200 miles of trails. I’m probably about to commit another bagel-type oversight here, but where I grew up in New Jersey definitely didn’t have such an extensive trail system. The outdoor spaces are one of the reasons I really enjoy living in this area. I’ve found some of my favorite outdoor spaces here just by examining Google maps for blocks of green. Others happen to be pull-offs with trail markers by the sides of roads. They can be so easy to miss, and so rewarding when found.
Particularly if you’ve hiked in regions you consider to be more scenic than where you live, it’s easy to think you’re missing out by not having the opportunity to be back in those other places. But on this particular hike, which was delightful on the way out, each parent with a child in a carrier, and noisy on the way back, each parent carrying a crying child, it was good to be closer to home. Sometimes what we need is right around the corner.
