Slow and Steady

While my favorite animal is a whale shark, and I adore every dog I meet, I think my spirit animal is the tortoise.

Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on Unsplash

I say this for a few reasons, but the main one is because I move in a slow fashion. Even when I was young and weighed much less than I do now, I didn’t move quickly; in fact, I preferred to jog long distances, like 2 miles, and I was so annoyed that the track coach made me run sprints instead of letting me run long distance that I quit.

Speedy I am not.

I love to swim, especially laps, but I would have failed miserably on the high school swim team because I don’t swim fast, but I have lots of endurance and can swim for a long time — and I can tread water for hours on end if needed, mostly because I’m incredibly buoyant.

I just don’t feel the need to rush from one end of the pool to the other or to walk so quickly that I miss what I’m passing through. Exceptions apply to airports when I need to make a connecting flight, of course, and I once did my fair share of running around after small children and keeping track of students, but those days are behind me now.

I’ve been on two great hikes lately in which I was always at the rear. While this is partly due to my age, my chubbiness, and my need for oxygen while ascending hills, it’s mostly due to my desire to take things in and not rush. I do believe in the adage that Emerson made famous with his quote that it’s about the journey and not the destination.

Why is everyone in a rush to get to the top or to the end? Yes, the view will be amazing when you reach the top, but there are great things to see along the way, and if you’re rushing, there’s a good chance you’re missing a lot of them.

When I eat with other people, I’m always the last to finish my meal, too. This only occasionally is because I’m talking too much; usually it’s simply because I also eat slowly. I always have.

All the years in which I taught school (30 of them), I seldom managed to finish my lunch in the allotted time — which wasn’t sufficient at all, but for me, it was because I am a slow eater. Again, what’s the rush? When you scarf the food down so fast, do you even enjoy it or taste it or savor it? Eating too quickly leads to indigestion, and there’s a greater risk of choking on your food.

Maybe I’m just defending the fact that I’m a slowpoke.

But the tortoise won that famous race because he was slow and steady. His persistence paid off. I believe in being persistent and continually working on something until it’s finished or until one step in the long journey is complete. One step at a time.

I think this perspective serves me well as a writer because there’s no final destination for this journey, and it’s one where I need to remain steadfast with my focus, but there’s no need to rush. I can set my own pace, which is a slow one, so I can be sure to put out the best writing possible all while enjoying the “views” as I move along in my journey.

I’m a meanderer when I travel and when I go on walks in new places. I like to “discover” new places and take them in at a leisurely pace. Solo travel or being with only one person who isn’t in a rush to get somewhere works best for me; otherwise, I feel like I’m holding everyone up, or I get annoyed by others telling me to “get a move on.”

Stop and smell the dang flowers, people. We’re all going to end up at the same final destination, so you might as well enjoy the journey while you’re here.

Tortoises are found everywhere in the world but Australia and Antarctica, which makes them even more fitting for me because I don’t want to visit either of those places, yet I do want to visit almost everywhere else in the world. Why not Australia? Snakes. Lots and lots of snakes and other deadly things. Why not Antarctica? Too flippin’ cold. I hate the cold.

As much as I love to swim, though, perhaps the sea turtle should be my spirit animal instead of the tortoise. That way I could even hang out with the whale sharks. Tortoises, though, live in all sorts of terrain, and I’m partial to forests and mountains from which I can see really far over the land, so I’ll stick to tortoises for now.

My recent hikes have been on a portion of the Appalachian Trail on the border between Tennessee and North Carolina and near a lake in the Black Hills of South Dakota. In both, I was in the rear — the tortoise of the hiking groups — but my views were no less amazing for bringing up the rear, and I savored everything as I moseyed.

Here are a few photos from those hikes.

When everyone else is far ahead, the view becomes unencumbered. I love this photo of an empty trail stretching out before me and inviting me to just take my time. Be like the tortoise. The hares in my group were already far ahead down this seemingly empty trail, but this tortoise didn’t mind at all.

Book six, a suspense novel, is taking me longer than I’d expected to finish writing it. While one part of me is very annoyed by this, the rational and calm part of me continuously reminds myself that it’s okay. Don’t rush it. Enjoy the process just as I prefer to enjoy my walks and hikes and my meals and my swims, etc.

It won’t be better by hurrying. Nothing ever is.

Slow and steady won that race and slow and steady will get the book finished. And the one after that. And the one after that. And so on.

I am slow and methodical. I am a tortoise.

Perhaps you find it ironic that I have and ride a motorcycle since I claim to prefer to do things slowly? Well, ask anyone who has ever ridden with me and you’ll know that I also tend to ride slowly, so I prefer to ride only with my boyfriend who is content to let me lead and set the pace. When we have to ride in groups for events, I get tense if the leader sets the cruising speed too fast, and sometimes I will break away to go at my own pace.

I detest interstates and avoid them whenever possible, especially through large cities. I prefer not to use them between cities, too, when time isn’t of the essence because the views and experiences are much better off the beaten path. I recently helped move my daughter halfway across the country, so, due to time constraints, we did use interstates for much of the drive, but there were times when we drove on highways instead, and those were the parts of the drive that I enjoyed the most.

I have a bucket list item of traversing the United States without even once using an interstate to do so. Take in as much of this great big country as I can at my slowpoke, tortoise pace.

Time will tell if I ever take such a trip, but it’s definitely on my travel list, as is taking a cruise across the Atlantic to revisit Europe instead of flying. I also hate to fly. Tortoises don’t have wings, you know, so it’s completely unnatural and slightly terrifying when I do fly. I want to sail alongside my cousins, the sea turtles, and enjoy the journey instead of being anxious for hours on end high above the land.

Thanks for reading (and listening — if you’re a paying subscriber, you have access to the podcast as well as all the past archives and the stuff beyond the paywall) to my musings this week about the topic of how I’m like the tortoise.

Below, I’m going to share some June poems I wrote nine years ago in honor of this being the first day of June.

Until next time.

Tammy Marshall