UncommonPromise

The early-fall days were still warm, but cool enough for a pleasant walk. Wandering the pine-needle-littered footpath, we followed a rough stone wall that curved around the wooded hillside.

The trail led alternately through dense woods and across open, expansive meadows with views over the countryside. We had intended to walk for an hour—long enough for exercise but not enough to distract us from urgent tasks. Yet when it came time to turn back we decided to continue. Swept up in beauty, we relaxed and absorbed. The sun gradually dropped in the cloudless sky, replacing the distant views with a dim, moody closeness. When the trail finally turned toward home, dusk had fallen. We laughed, amused that our one-hour walk had consumed most of the day.



Refreshed but exhausted, we settled in our chairs by a crackling fire and reflected on the simplicity of spontaneous experiences. We wrote in our journals, recalling how, in moments of surprise, we often find rare and intimate encounters with ourselves.

As the words spilled effortlessly onto the pages, our hard-edged self-identities softened and blurred. Spontaneity often hides beneath the limited intentions of our daily routines, ready to whisk us away on new trails with sufficient surprises to fill an empty journal.

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Under the Tuscan Thumb Blog