“Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose….

Not I, nor anyone else can travel that road for you.
You must travel it by yourself.
It is not far. It is within reach.
Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know.
Perhaps it is everywhere – on water and land.”

– Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

Poet, Walt Whitman once proclaimed that a child entering the world each day might take upon the energy of all that was ‘seen.’ And, in a very special way, it seems.

For, “the first object he look’s upon he became. And that object became part of him for a day or a certain part of the day, Or for many years or stretching cycle of years.”

I’d like to think we carry these ‘faces of joy’ on throughout our years; through twisted paths, and climbing branches and streams that never seem to end.

Their energy is always with us – a vested piece of our most precious soul.

Begging us to carry them forward – ‘afoot and light-hearted’ on this wide and open road.