👉 Living The Simple Life (Part 4)

🔷 The first few years I used a blue scarf and a blue sweater during chilly weather, but I eventually discarded them as not really essential. I am now so adjustable to changes in temperature that I wear the same clothes summer and winter, indoors and out. Like the birds, I migrate north in the summer and south in the winter. If you wish to talk to people out-of-doors, you must be where the weather is pleasant or people will not be out.

🔶 When the temperature gets high and the sun gets hot there is nothing so welcome as shade. There is a special coolness about the shade of a tree, but unless it is a big tree some shifting is required to stay in the shade. Clouds provide shade as they drift across the sun. A rock provides what I call deep shade; so does a bank early in the morning or late in the afternoon. Sometimes even the shade of a bush is appreciated, or that of a haystack. Man-made things provide shade too. Buildings, of course, and even signs which disfigure the landscape do provide shade.

🔷 So do bridges, providing shelter from the rain as well. Of course, one can wear a hat or carry an umbrella. I do neither. Once when a reporter asked if by chance I had a folding umbrella in my pockets I replied, ‘‘I won’t melt. My skin is waterproof. I don’t worry about little discomforts.’’ But I’ve sometimes used a piece of cardboard for a sun shade. Water is something you think of in hot weather, but I have discovered that if I eat nothing but fruit until my day’s walk is over I do not get thirsty. Our physical needs are so simple.

To be continued...