(Alternatively, a case for killing time.)

Last Monday, my son and I walked to the farm stand across the street. It’s a short walk — 0.3 miles door to door. Normally, it’s a ten-minute errand. Monday? It took us an hour.

We stopped to watch the chickens. We picked up rocks. We threw them in the puddles and then picked up more. We pointed at the clouds. Smelled flowers. Stomped in mud. Hopped like a bunny [hop hop hop] and whispered so they wouldn’t run away. 

Three of them didn’t.

I kept catching myself saying things like, “Okay, let’s keep going,” and “keep walking, please,” out of habit. That instinct to rush, to nudge, to hurry up — it’s so automatic.

Halfway there, with “Henry, please keep walking” on my lips, I asked myself why I was rushing him. 

There was nowhere to be but back home killing more time. The hours stretched ahead of us like warm laundry. No plans. No clock. Just this boy and the dirt and the world he’s still meeting for the first time.

He was showing me a pace I forgot to remember. The kind of slow that makes the bunnies stay visible. The kind of slow that lets a little bit of magic return.

Our Walk by the Numbers:

• 1 cucumber crunched on
• 2 puddles stomped in
• 3 bunnies spotted
• 4 tractors admired
• 5 chickens stared at for a full 30 seconds
• 17 million rocks thrown into the water (and more pocketed for later)

Plus, one slow hour, lifted out of the march of time, where stillness showed me everything I’d been missing.

That’s what I want photos to feel like too.

Not something we rush through. Not a box we check. But a pocket of time where we notice the things that are usually too quiet, too soft, too fleeting to catch when we’re moving fast. A dimple. A dirty hand. A giggle that curls up and hides the second someone says “say cheese.”

Here’s to toddler walks, bunny sightings, and taking the slow way home.

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