On a Stroll

I hate strolling.

I think those of us who hate the stroll are the same ones who despise yoga, as I once did. If I couldn't sweat, elevate my heart rate or at least get some endorphins pumping, I was outta' there.

On the other hand, I love walking - fast, killing-four-birds-with-each-step walking: walking for exercise, walking the dog, walking with a friend, walking toward a goal. A woman in my book club adds the fifth element by listening to books on tape while she power walks with her dog and bike-riding first grader on her way to an important destination.

I have little patience for strollers. If pedestrians came equipped with horns, I would blast mine at the slow-moving mall strollers who block traffic. I would beep at George, who takes the stairs in our house one languid step at a time, while I hop, skip and jump two-by-two from basement to second floor. I would honk at the dawdling airline passengers who apparently have all day to get to their gates.

In spite of my strollerphobia, I opted last Sunday to take a tour of a private, one acre Japanese strolling garden in Pasadena. The garden was part of the LA Conservancy's "Cultivating LA" tour of five sites representing Southern California's Japanese-style gardening traditions. I skipped the other four gardens, but didn't want to miss the chance to peek into the only private garden on the tour. (Hey, I told you I was nosy.)

One of the unique feature of the strolling garden is that it never shows all of itself from one spot or at one time. These gardens use the Japanese landscape principle of "hide and reveal" to "enlighten and revive the spirit of the observer" by gradually exposing the garden's wonders

The design of the Japanese strolling garden forces me to do what comes unnaturally to me: slow to a stroll. At the Pasadena garden and later at the Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, the slow pace gave me the chance to contemplate the sound of the trickling water, the feel of the wind, the shape of the lanterns, the smell of the fallen leaves and the taste of the warm Jasmine tea. I even felt a haiku coming on. And the woman photographer making a mad dash from site to site became the object of the sanctimonious disdain I usually reserve for mall strollers.

I didn't rush through the gardens or worry about what was waiting round the bend. The next vista or contemplation spot remained hidden until it was time to be revealed. Breathe in, breathe out. Hide and reveal. These are lessons I'm being forced to learn.

Now I'm trying to apply the hide and reveal garden philosophy to my own life. My natural tendency is to power walk into the back yard of life and insist upon seeing the whole garden revealed in one glance, weeds and all. But there's beauty, serenity and drama (yes, definitely drama) in strolling into a world that hides and then reveals itself when the time is right. And that's what I'm trying to appreciate while I'm waiting for the next site (i.e. test and test results) to be revealed.