It’s just a shorter walk in the park

WHY walk when you can drive?

When you’re a child your attention span is a whole lot shorter than adults.

It seems for most people their patience increases with age, but for me, I’ve never really shaken off that particular childhood trait.

Back in school I used to get easily distracted.

It wasn’t because the material being taught was uninteresting or presented badly.

I just couldn’t handle hours upon hours of class.

Now I’m no longer a schoolkid I get frustrated by completely normal procedures in everyday life that make me wait, such as routine delays in traffic on the way to work or the shops.

I probably need someone to sit in my car and remind me: relax, that red light just means it’s someone else’s turn to move.

For hobbies I used to have little patience for, I haven’t grown into them like some of my friends have.

Instead, I try and find ways to keep the time spent to a minimum without losing out on enjoyment. Take hiking (or bushwalking): The pastime where you put on your sturdiest shoes and wander through the Aussie bush for anything from a few minutes to several days. My parents always used to take me and my sister on these walks and I did enjoy them. But sometimes the track would just seem to go on and on. To cope, us kids used to play games like trying to see how far ahead of the olds we could get. Fast forward to the weekend past, and I’m planning a hike near Lorne with a friend of mine. One of the things my mate and I have in common is our short attention spans.

Our aim was to walk to a charming little waterfall in Great Otway National Park. So we drove our car to the trailhead, and prepared ourselves for the four-hour long trek.

Before we set off, I happened to take a second look at the map of the trail. I noticed the road we drove in on actually kept going pretty much all the way to the falls. So why were we walking all that way?

There was even a little path built in between the road and the walking track right near our destination. I guess it was put in especially for people like me.

You can guess what happened next. We spent another 10 minutes in the car before we went on a much shorter walk to a truly picturesque spot.

I still feel like I got my hiking fix.