#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream

It takes more energy for me to make my daily walk here in Martinique. Partly, it's the penetrating heat of full sun when I'm not under the forest canopy.  Partly, it's the ruggedness of the tree rooted trail under thick, tropical trees, and then watching my step on the slippery slope of the sugar cane field because it's almost always freshly washed with a shower of light rain, and the grass is slick and the soil is puddled. But it's also psychic, this extra energy: to go out alone without Charlie and Suzi sniffing and running and keeping track of me, making sure I belong to them. Strange, to walk so remotely under such a wide open sky, in a foreign country, where I rarely meet another human - sometimes, another hiker, perhaps a cow, occasionally a car or small truck passing in the distance, and one day, an elderly island woman walking with a big bag of produce (?) - (where did she came from? where is she going?) on her head and one in her arms in the rain, sidestepping the fresh brown puddles. I walk into the cane field and I have a feeling of being outside myself, high up, looking down from the white puffball clouds at myself, this small speck of a fifty-something woman with her walking sticks, and I wonder who she is in Martinique, how did she get here, and where is she going?