After the husband retired from the investment firm in the city and the wife from the suburban medical practice where she was the claims manager, the couple established a new habit of walking for an hour every morning. Life would be healthier for them now, they agreed. He no longer rushed to board the train that trundled commuters through grimy yards, past storage sheds, along weed-grown rights of way. She no longer hurried, tense behind the wheel, to claim a convenient parking place near the sprawling, red brick buildings of the medical center. Leisure was theirs now and time to enjoy the world of nature; they had earned it. Almost every day, after a quiet breakfast, they walked to the conservation area just down the road from their suburban house. They crossed the small parking area and followed a trail that looped through the woods, around a pond, up over a low rise between meadows, and back again to the road and the beginning. They congratulated themselves that now, after years of work, of fitting home repairs and trimming the forsythia and mowing the lawn around the demands of their jobs, their choice of a semi-rural location was paying off. They would enjoy the changing seasons, the wayside flowers, the wild life, at last.

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