Time to Activate Your Adventurous Spirit

Embracing the unexpected can lead to adventurous surprises. You don’t have to be in Belize or Bali to invoke your adventurous spirit. Slowing down has opened up new possibilities for discovering places closer to home. Being spontaneous and curious can happen right outside your door.

Before COVID-19, I rarely walked my neighborhood. There’s a trail behind the house with a sidewalk path that leads to schools and communities beyond mine. Families of cyclers, mothers with strollers, grandmothers, and toddlers, fill the sidewalk every afternoon. To honor the six-foot distance rule and find a sense of nature in the outdoors, I’ve gone off-road. I’ve taken my walks off that bustling thoroughfare to the sidewalks and allies of my neighborhood.

This pandemic really could not have happened at a better time, seasonally speaking.

Cooler mornings give way to warmer afternoons, offering a variety of weather choices. The streets have very few cars — no teenagers running stop signs after three o’clock. Very few service vehicles stopped in front of the houses — only the occasional Prime van. Walk along in the silence for a chance to enjoy the bright green leaves of an early-budding oak tree and the cotton-candy colored blooms of the flowering cherry or magnolia jane trees.