How do you process grief? One foot at a time

Yesterday morning, we put our 16-year-old cat to sleep.

After lots of crying, my husband wanted to take a walk, so we did, wandering new and old paths in our neighborhood and sitting in the park for a long time.

I don’t know exactly what it is about a hike or a walk that’s most healing: the physical motion, the time to think, the reminder that there’s a whole world going on around you.

But I’ve found solace in hiking before, and so have the two of us together, and certainly plenty of famous people have too.

It was tempting to sit in the house and stare at the walls today. But it was empty in here, too. We knew being outside again would be good for us.

We ended up right back where we were last weekend, in the bosque, this time on the west side of the Rio Grande.

When we got out of our car midmorning, the parking lot was mobbed, and it was loud. But after we passed under the Montano Bridge and began walking north, we saw only a few people.

The narrow path flirted with the river’s shore, gaps in reeds leading to a grassy spot on the bank, or to a sandbar.

The leaves of the sweet-smelling, invasive Russian olives glinted in the sun.

Mountain views opened up as we passed through meadows.

We saw a dog chasing a coyote. (This will probably betray the gaps in my animal behavior knowledge, but I thought that would work the other way around.)

A few minutes later, we watched a coyote (maybe the same one?) run, then swim across the shallow Rio. Two orange-and-black butterflies danced across our path.

We saw two egrets wing across the water and above the trees. They’re the only water birds I can remember actually seeing on the water in New Mexico.

We watched a bluebird, a bright flash amid the green cottonwood leaves.

After about a mile, a side channel of the river blocked our progress along the trail on the bank, at least momentarily. We headed back on a shadier path through the cottonwoods.

Our cat loved being outside. As sick as he was, he insisted on stumbling outside Thursday night and again Friday morning before we took him to the vet for the last time.

When he was young, he was a fierce predator who once killed two hummingbirds in one day and severed more than one lizard’s tail.

At the end, he spent much of his outdoor time sitting in the grass, watching his fellow creatures instead of trying to devour them.

Always, he loved the world around him.

Our walk this morning reminded us how much there is to love.

Hike length: 2.4 miles

Difficulty: easy

Trail traffic: light north of Montano Bridge, heavy elsewhere

Wildlife spotted/heard: lizards, egrets, Western bluebird, coyote, butterflies, dragonflies, bees (some REALLY HUGE bees), nuthatches, sparrows, Cooper’s hawk