My Dad was a chemical engineer and a big proponent of education. So, when my seventh grade science class was studying the chemical elements, he thought it would be a great idea to do a show-and-tell like experiment for class. (And we wonder why I ended up a little geeky?)

The experiment involved a filter, two beakers, charcoal, cotton and cranberry juice. Inside the filter, I layered the charcoal and cotton, then sat it on top of one of the beakers. I poured the second beaker — full of cranberry juice — into the filter, and out came water! Clear water!

I remembered this as I was walking in the woods this morning. It was not a very quiet walk—there were thoughts and ideas cartwheeling and somersaulting all over the place!

I am coming off of four pretty fun, jam-packed days of celebrations. I saw lots of loved ones and connected with even more online, took a road trip, went shopping, had a few excellent meals, enjoyed some cocktails, did some writing, watched a couple movies. That’s a lot of people, places and things to process!

So I just kept walking—up the hill, around the bend to the meadow filled with morning sun, into the woods where the mushrooms show up, over the footbridge to the rocky path where I sometimes spy snakes, then down through the cool stand of pines, over the bridge by the bench to the field grown tall with wildflowers, and back alongside the pond where the egret hangs out with turtles, to the parking lot.

Chattering all the way. In my head. With barely a moment’s rest.

But as I neared the trailhead carrying the thought of my Dad and that science experiment, I realized—sometimes these walks are for quiet, and sometimes they are for filtering. And either way, I leave much clearer than when I arrived.

IMAGE found on Seesaw Designs

8 Responses

  1. It’s amazing what little relaxation can do for a cluttered mind. I just came back from vacation and I can’t believe how much easier it is to think. A change of scenery does wonders. :-)

Leave a Reply


You are commenting using your account. Log Out /  Change )

Google photo


Twitter picture


Facebook photo


Connecting to %s
