Encoutering people and places

I set off at random for this morning's walk. "Not the common - I'm always going there". I kept going along my usual starting path, that eventually led past the University where I used to work. Walking here gives me mixed feelings. Occasionally I encounter people I used to work with. Two month's ago it was a whole bunch of them, one now in a wheel chair. These meetings always feel uncertain, as though they are assuming that I have continued on the old tracks (which I have left long ago).
Then I walked along roads to a muddy tree-lined path that returned me back to my start, at the rear entry to the university. To the right was a rough opening in the trees ... and I was swiftly among them, taking the clearest paths, much of it by crawling.
At the ended I emerged on the a familiar road that would take me home.
No surprises, no ecstatic revelations, just the "rightness" of life.