It is completely amazing to feel good <em>all</em> the time, as I have for the last 11 days.

I certainly don't mean physically, although even that is improving rapidly. A month ago, I couldn't hike three miles without feeling exhausted. Now I'm doing 5 1/4 miles early in the morning and feeling great (with a couple of minor exceptions). I have started carrying a tube of Ben-Gay along on my hike, and when I stop on the way back for my snack and some thinking, I rub it on my left oblique until I can feel it burning.

My left side is a lot weaker than my right, and if that big muscle doesn't stop barking sooner or later, I might have it surgically removed. Then there's my left Achilles tendon, which is never going to be completely normal again.

But even when I hurt, it doesn't bother me.

[caption id="attachment_471" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Beginning and finish line"]<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Texas-009.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-471" title="Texas 009" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Texas-009-300x199.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="199" /></a>[/caption]

There are at least five or six places I could cut my hike short, but I don't do it. I don't hike just for the hiking, and cutting it short would cheat me out of all the other benefits of it -- the thinking, the creativity and especially the closeness to God and nature.

This morning I was feeling particularly good, and I was thinking about how wonderful this summer has been for me. The chance to step outside my life, as it were, and fix the things that were wrong.

I owe so much to my wife for her willingness to let me do this. Nicole is my joy, and the fact that we are able to spend this time about without worrying whether we will still love each other when I return home has worked wonders for me.

When I pray, as I do most mornings, I always start with the same line:

<em>"Dear Lord, thank you for my life."</em>

And today I ended with a different line:

<em>"And thank you for the most wonderful summer of my life."</em>

As I walked up the final hill at the end of my 5 1/4 miles, the music from the shuffle in my iPod was really terrific. First was Sarah Brightman's soaring rendition of "Time to Say Goodbye," and as I crested the hill and saw my car a couple of hundred feet off, Waylon and Willie went into "Good Hearted Woman."

The serendipity was enough to make me laugh.