Outfoxed On My Walk.

A yearning for solitude gets undermined.

Sundays are the only days I can walk up the Eisenberg and do my long route as part of it involves the main road which is hardly used on Sunday mornings. It is sheer bliss for me to walk there as the views are second to none and the hills are steep enough to make a difference to my derriere.

About a month ago I stopped to talk to a fellow walker and his two dogs. Being friendly and so forth is all good and well but it resulted in him joining me for a long leg of my walk. Look, there is nothing wrong with him but I liked my solitude which clearly he didn't. I do know where he stays and that he lives alone ( in small places nothing is a secret ) so perhaps he enjoys drawn out conversations.

That one time he walked with me, a few cars did pass us and only afterwards did I find out that he gave one of the drivers a filthy look because they drove too close to his dogs. How did I find out? Well, someone in the village asked me whether he was a good friend of mine as they had seen us walking together. Yes, village life.

The last few Sundays I have admittedly tried to dodge him by changing my times ( it does sound harsh but I wanted to be alone with my thoughts ) and when I did run into him, I did keep the conversation short and rushed off with an excuse to watch the skiing on the telly. Well, today I saw him in the distance behind me and seeing that it was far enough for me not to stop, I gave him a friendly wave while I carried on walking at my usual pace...a fast pace.

All of a sudden I kept hearing the sound of the dogs' heavy breathing catching up to me and when I couldn't ignore it any longer I turned around and saw that he and his dogs were almost next to me. Couldn't be rude so I stopped and waited for them. Just my luck that his dogs are Huskies, used to being the front runners...

Biggi