My favorite place is nowhere and everywhere. Simultuneously. From an early age walking out my front door into the night. No destination. No goal. Deciding which way to go for a stroll around my neighborhood. Then the whole city at large. City streets lit first by dim street lights. Then by mercury vapor lamps. Eventually they even lit the alleyways. Shame , because alley’s had the best shadows. You could really tell a neighborhood by its alley. Just down the alley from home there was a cement and broken glass garden with windmills and bridges and houses and walls along the black cinder alleyway. A well kept garden. Cement and glass carefully smoothed. I had to go back there in the daytime just to take in the full wonder and be sure it was not a midnight phantasm. It was there. The glorious miles I covered as I branched out. The hours filled in silent reverie exploring the streets and alleys of my urban habitat. People sitting on their porches on hot summer nights. Some sleeping there too. I would quietly wander. No mischief. No malintent. Just Urban Hiking. Even through snow storms I’d hike on. These days it’s day hiking. Different insights. Shorter durations and milage. Grateful to be able to enjoy my nowheres and everywheres again after decades of that pleasure was taken away with every other step. I breathe in inspiration and breathe out expiration on my strolls through a wonderland that holds both urban, lake, and bucolic residential views whenever I can. Because I am the luckiest man in the world

SoCS