Getting out the door

Used to be that I did my best thinking in the shower or on long drives down the 401 or up the 400 to the cottage. Since I moved to Bermuda I found that these two staples of life in Canada no longer worked for me. The scarcity of fresh water for long showers and the fact that the farthest I can drive from my house is a relatively short and attention demanding twenty kilometers to Ireland Island means that I have had to search out a new venue to clear my head and tackle the issues of the day.

Palm Gardens, our family's oasis in the middle of the Atlantic, sits on North Shore Road overlooking the ocean. A step out of the front door leaves you looking at passing cruise ships, sailboats, the occasional Dockyard to St. George's ferry and a vast expanse of some of the most beautiful blue water that you have ever seen.

Behind us is a steep incline to the top of a ridge which runs parallel to the sea and overlooks, on its south slope, the campus of Somersfield Academy. Half-way up our side, winding through farms, forests, a golf course and the occasional pocket of houses is our section of what used to be the rail bed of the old "Rattle and Shake" Bermuda's short-lived, narrow-gauge railway that ran from one end of the island to the other. The railway is long gone, supplanted by the overpopulation of cars and motor-bikes that now clog the local roads, but the rail bed is still there. Converted into a running/walking/biking/horse riding trail, the legacy of Bermuda's brief participation in the age of steam is a car-free passage that intermittently can take you from the outskirts of St. George's in the east to Somerset in the west.

It is the railway trail that has become my new respite from the incursions of the day to day and has become an integral part of my exercise regimen - four or five good runs a week - and my almost daily walking route to and from school.

So, like the horse droppings that I often have to dance around or dodge with the running stroller, these are my trailings - thoughts that come to mind and get deposited during my trips along the trail. No doubt some will be worth avoiding but hopefully some will result in the fertile growth of new ideas and responses.

I'll keep you posted!