Ramble with Storm: "An improbable journey"

Mulling things on my morning ramble with Storm, our family’s mixed Lab.

A ramble is a fragment of a journey.

But by those shards, these morning fragments, I put together a life, what President Obama called his own “improbable journey” this morning in his speech at the service for Nelson Mandela.

Awoke too early at 4 a.m., so I got up and did some work. The temperature was a ridiculous -4. I wanted to wait until it warmed to at least 0 before setting out with Storm.

So I had time to hear the President’s speech on WGN-AM. I have a feeling it will be the speech that defines him in history.

The “improbable journey” came in a sentence–“It woke me up to my responsibilities–to others, and to myself–and set me on an improbable journey that finds me here today.”–near the end of the speech.

I think “finds me here today” is a nice way to capture that we are all on an imperfect journey. And I was glad that the President touched on how we are all imperfect, even great men like Mandela.

In some ways, the brutal cold seemed insignificant after hearing the speech, but it was very real and of this world. We kept the ramble under a mile. I tried to stop and head home before Storm began shaking his foot with frozen paw issues.

And I think I timed it right.

No wildlife stirring at all in our small ramble. But then some mornings the ramble is less about the physical space and more about what tumbles around in my head.

It was one of those mornings.

We have potential, all of us on our own improbable journeys.

In some ways, back home, getting back to cranking out my usual Tuesday work on the outdoors for the Sun-Times outdoors page on Wednesdays seems insignificant.

But it is part of my own improbable journey.