A Year of Morning Walks

Last year on March 19th I took my first daily morning walk. It went something like this:

Sunday, March 19, 2023, 7:52 AM

It wasn't the first morning walk I had taken, but I am surprised that it wasn't the last. Every day we've walked, I've stopped at the end of the driveway to take a photo, or several, to post on Instagram & Facebook. (Originally I was posting them weekly here, but after the photo-inserter tool stopped connecting to my Google Photos, I moved to IG, cross posting from there to FB.)

Wednesday, August 9, 2023, 6:39 AM | Photo credit to Jacqueline

We didn't walk every day: if it was raining too hard, we wouldn't go. It's one thing to get cold -- we can handle the cold for the short time it takes to do our walk -- but it's entirely different thing to get cold and soaked through. That kind of cold sticks for the whole day.

Tuesday, December 19, 2023, 6:44 AM

The hardest days to go were when it was DARK and cold. Sure it got dark in the fall before Daylight Savings Time ended but it wasn't too cold yet, so not too hard, but the days in December and January, when the clouds blocked any light, when the temps were below freezing.... Those were the days I didn't want to leave my cozy bed and wander about outside. It almost seemed pointless.

Tuesday, December 26, 2023, 7:44 AM

But the dark mornings made these gloriously light & color-filled morning all the better. And the benefits to my mental & physical health are worth it. The purpose of taking the walks when first waking up is to get those photons into my eyeballs, to signal to my circadian clock that about 16 hours from now, I need to get sleepy and go to bed. And it has done that. It's also been a mood booster. I might not like getting up and going to work, but taking just these few minutes before jumping into the hustle & bustle of all that really seems to make a difference.

So I plan to continue these daily walks when I first wake up, but after Tuesday, I won't be posting them every single day anymore.