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Category: walking

Stepping Up

Stepping Up

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I’ve never been a step counter, so the headline in yesterday’s newspaper, “New Walking Tips Drop the 10,000 Steps Goal,” wasn’t a disappointment. But given that the article was about walking, well, I had to read it. 

I learned some interesting facts: While experts have lowered the 10,000 steps goal— the number of steps doctors recommend we get each day for healthy living — they haven’t lowered it by all that much. For adults under 60 it’s 8,000 to 10,000 and for those over 60 it’s 6,000 to 8,000.

What I found especially useful were the equivalencies: 1,000 steps is approximately half a mile, and 3,000 steps represents about a half hour of walking. Helpful — to a point. I usually measure a walk by the number of ideas it inspires … and I’ve yet to see a scale for that. 

Fellow Travelers

Fellow Travelers

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Some emerge just past dawn for their morning stroll, eyes blinking, still taking in the light. They leave early for the office or they can’t sleep or they feel dutiful getting in their steps early. 

Others require a cup of tea or other sustenance, so you might find them in the 8 or 9 o’clock hours.

Still others just squeak by calling their daily perambulation a morning walk. They start at 11 a.m. and return just in time for lunch. 

What all of these people have in common, though, is that they are regulars. I see them most every day, depending on when I hit “the track” (also known as the main street of my neighborhood). Some of them I know well, others only by sight. But they are my companions, my fellow travelers, and I honor them all.

Wandering Home

Wandering Home

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As much as I extoll the practice, walking in the suburbs is largely for exercise and mental refreshment, for perspective. It’s difficult to run errands or visit folks without jumping in the car.

But yesterday I had time to amble through the woods to meet a friend, who lives on the other side of a county forest.

On the way there I had my eye on the clock, picking up the pace to reach her house more or less when I said I would. But on the way home I savored the green splendor of the stroll, birds ruffling the underbrush, stream water pouring over and around a flat rock.

It felt like rain, clammy and portentous. I took my time, reveled in the mood and the moment. I wandered home.

Just the Same

Just the Same

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The Pacific Northwest is a city of vistas, proof of the good things that happen when water and mountains meet. 

Here on the other coast, a gentler, calmer, less dramatic form of beauty. My eyes adjust to it as they would a darkening room. 

I snap shots of one fetching curve of a favorite walk, note how trees and grasses frame a small pond. This is not the vast expanse of Puget Sound, the white-topped Olympic Mountains in the distance.  It’s a more humble, everyday kind of beauty. But it’s beauty, just the same. 

Loop Walk

Loop Walk

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Can confusion be knit into a landscape? Is there something about a particular topography, no matter how serene it appears, that can turn our heads? Would I be asking these questions if I didn’t think there was? Yesterday I took a path I’ve hiked several times before. Once again, I paused at the juncture of three trails. Once again, I chose the “wrong” path.

Or was it? This trail led me into a cool green forest along the Snakeden Branch. I took deep breaths, heard a bird I didn’t recognize. I knew approximately where I was. No need for panic. In fact, when the trail spit me out on a major thoroughfare, I realized there was circular potential.

The rails-to-trails marvel that is the W&OD was nearby, and the path I missed intersected it. If I could find that juncture, I could take a loop walk. The W&OD was sunny, and I wasn’t sure how long I would be on it. Just when I thought I’d missed the crossroads, I saw the sign and escaped through a bright meadow into deep shade.

It was a different walk than the one I meant to take, but a good one just the same.

On the Fence

On the Fence

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A family in the Phinney Ridge neighborhood of Seattle has come up with a whimsical way to depict the immensity of space: they’ve turned their wooden fence into the solar system. 

On these planks you’ll see the sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars and Earth plus our moon. Far enough down the block that my phone camera couldn’t capture them in one shot are Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. 

A final panel reads “Where is Pluto? Pluto would be across our neighbor’s driveway,” followed by a discussion of Pluto’s status as dwarf planet, a fact about which some scientists are “on the fence.” 😊

It’s not the sort of thing I’m used to seeing on my neighborhood walks. But isn’t that point of travel — to take us away and shake us up and help us see our world, even our universe, with fresh eyes? 

Magnificent Forest

Magnificent Forest

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“You are entering a fragile, ancient forest,” the sign read. “Please stay on the trail.” So we entered the woods with reverence, walked quietly along the path, and guessed the age of the towering trees. 

To be old growth, a forest must contain trees more than 250 years old. Seattle’s Seward Park has them, though many of its specimens are “only” in the 200-year range.  But the Western Hemlocks are dying, the sword fern too.

How to protect them, to understand and prevent their demise? How to keep this “Magnificent Forest,” as it’s called, as dark, mysterious and magical as it is now? Researchers are working on it. And yesterday, we did our part: we looked, we marveled, we stayed on the trail. 

Another Word for Travel

Another Word for Travel

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We spent much of yesterday in Discovery Park, exploring Capehart Forest, the West Point lighthouse and a steep trail that connects the two. A bald eagle soared above us.

West Point is one of 18 active lighthouses in the state, and the point of land it sits upon has been a gathering spot for thousands of years. As the largest park in a city of vistas, this place offers a stunning array of views to contemplate. 

What an apt name for a place of long history and tradition. Discovery: to be discovered, to find something unexpectedly in the course of a search. Another word for travel.

On Foot to the Sound

On Foot to the Sound

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Yesterday, the reprise of a walk I remember taking years ago: through Seattle’s Carkeek Park to Puget Sound. We started on a trail that my friend Peggy designed and helped bring about. From there we entered a woods so deep, light-filtered and northwestern that I wanted to bottle it and bring it home.

There were meadows and wildflowers and an old orchard. Pipers Creek was our constant companion. 

Shortly before we reached the water, we walked across a high bridge that straddled a railroad track. A freight train was moving through, car after car.  The view took on motion then, and the water glittered in the sun. 

A Benediction

A Benediction

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The first thing I notice is the scent. The air is perfumed, mid-May incarnate. Early honeysuckle? I don’t think so. Viburnum perhaps?  I inhale as I walk, which supercharges each step. 

The next thing I notice is the mud. It’s been only a few days since I last walked in the woods, but it’s rained hard since then, and paths that were packed are now spongy, pliable.  My boots leave an impression. 

The stream is gurgling. The forest has greened and expanded with the much-needed moisture. It has moved up and out. It holds me as I walk, sifts its stillness down, a gift, a benediction.