Change is Good

I don’t like getting in my car to go somewhere to walk. I generally walk out our front door, take a right, then head towards Oregon State’s campus up Washington Way. It’s quiet there, not much traffic. The biggest hazard is students with earbuds on scooters.

The downside of not getting in my car to go somewhere to walk is that I’m inclined to take the same or similar routes every day. After a couple of weeks, I realize I’m bored and make myself take a left where I would normally go right, straight when I would normally go left. Change is good for me.

Over the weekend I took a left out our front door and headed downtown. I don’t meander into town too often. I’m usually there for a reason: the Post Office or writing at New Morning Café. But Friday I felt like wandering.

On the corner of 2^nd and Jefferson, I noticed a glass-encased bulletin board by the front door of a business called At Home Property Management. Curious, I stopped to look, thinking I’d see a list of apartments for rent in Corvallis. Instead, I found these biographies of their “employees,” proving yet again that deviations in my routine are good for me.

Still makes me laugh…

Thanksgiving Day, we drove 50 miles to Newport Beach on the Oregon Coast. After a long beach walk and an over-sized breakfast, we went south on Pacific Coast Highway rather than heading east towards home. The sun was out. Traffic was light. It was another good day to wander. We crossed the The Yaquina Bay Bridge, south of Newport, took a precarious and probably illegal left on the far side, and eventually discovered The Oregon Coast Aquarium, a place we’d never heard of before. For 40 bucks, we got to see a whole new world of sea creatures.

Later, as we were leaving, we talked about whether those fish, seals, sharks, minnows, stingrays, starfish, and more were better off in an aquarium than in their native habitats. It’s an important question to ask. I came away feeling good about it. The natural habitats of these incredible creatures are in peril. The aquarium provides safety for a few of them, and an up-close opportunity for our eyes to see how magnificent they are. How mysterious and miraculous this planet of ours is.