Squeezing in a quick jaunt

Especially when daylight time is limited, it's difficult to fit a long ramble into my work week. Runningmap.com has been especially helpful in planning quick jaunts for during my lunch hour. It's much like a program you'd use to find driving directions with some very useful features. Not only does the program show satellite views and distances, it also allows the route to go wherever the user desires: the wrong way down a street, along a hidden path, through a stranger's home...

I like to build new loops for romps of varying lengths. If it weren't quite so cold and rainy today (or if I weren't such wuss), I'd take 20 minutes out of my lunch hour for this 1.25 mile loop that includes a half-mile portion of the Sudbury Aqueduct.

And so it begins

Inspiration snuck up on me, like spring in New England.

You may know what I mean: the weatherman continues to predict snow or wintry mix every other day, but somehow it just doesn't happen like that. Instead, the ground begins to thaw, the mud rolls in, and if you pay close attention, you may notice a crocus timidly poking its new leaves through the muck or even a bud on a tree. It's easy to miss in the city; as the possibility of a late winter blizzard lurks, you still find yourself spending time outdoors bundled up, running from one indoor space to another.

Then suddenly the realization comes -- it's actually gorgeous outside. A little muddy perhaps, but gorgeous nonetheless. As they say, spring has sprung!

In the past, I spent a lot of time outdoors. My tenure working in the botanical gardens in college brought me out into sweltering heat and bitter cold, brilliant sunshine and persistent mist. I also had a summer babysitting on the beach and many days working happily in the soil of a suburban garden or CSA farm.

Two infections with Lyme disease, a half dozen sunburns, and hundreds of bites from insects (of many varieties) later, I moved to the city of Cambridge, just North of Boston, and took my first desk job.

I've been working indoors for over a year now and it's time for a new approach. I assume some people happily live the super- super-majority of their lives indoors, but there's no way I'm one of them. If I'm going to remain an office rat, I need to make a more deliberate effort to get outdoors. This does not mean that I'm going to dash out of work on Friday evening to travel to the most remote location I can get to and still hobble exhausted back in on Monday.

Instead, I will explore the green spaces close to where I normally roam, predominantly public parks. I'll trek off my well-worn concrete path to find new places and explore those spots I've 'always wanted to go' and hope that along the way, I may inspire you to do the same.

And so it begins...