The miracle of walking

I find it fascinating to watch a dog run up and down stairs, or up and down mountain trails. They do it effortlessly, naturally. It seems to me their task is quite a bit harder than humans. We just have to shift our weight and balance from one foot to the next. But dogs have to coordinate four feet - front and back, left and right, in a way that keeps their balance and avoids trips and slips. They do it rapidly and with agility. When I'm on an uneven mountain trail, I have to watch carefully where I am going to put my foot on the next step, each step, one at a time. How do dogs manage to coordinate all four feet??

But even human locomotion is a wonder. We watched a movie recently about a soldier in Norway during WWII who had frostbitten feet and had to have all his toes amputated. He had to learn how to walk again. Though we are not conscious of it, even our toes play a critical part in very subtle ways in maintaining our balance.

In fact, many tendons and muscles throughout the body contribute to the complicated process - how the weight is transferred, when joints are bent or straight, how the torso is positioned, etc. Walking is an incredibly sophisticated activity that we completely take for granted, until we have something happen that causes us to struggle with it!

We saw a TV report recently about a company named Boston Dynamics that has spent years and many million dollars developing robots that have many of the physical abilities of movement that come so naturally to humans. We are walking miracles. We are miracles walking.

I #GiveThanks for the astonishing complexity of our bodies, much of which we are completely unaware of. What a marvel of creation!