On a walk my first day back I marveled at the transformation. When I left for vacation, school was still in session and early heat was still battling spring chill. But now it is full-on summer.
On the lake, fishermen wait patiently for a nibble. Children cavort on canoes and paddle boards. Sunbathers turn their towels toward the sun. Shade is deep and wide; the walker seeks it when she can.
The place I live no longer feels like a suburb. It feels like a camp.
An early walk this morning, into a day just dawning. I leave my earphones out for a while to take in the bird calls, a steady ripple of sound punctuated by the brisk staccato of the woodpecker’s drill.
Walking before 7, something I seldom do these days, is such a gift. It gives us the day before it’s lost its creases and its curls, while it’s still fresh and still.
Sometimes I see a fox skulking home after a long night of hunting. Other times a young deer, hiding in the grass.
In early morning, the day is still a wild thing. It does not yet belong to us — if it ever does.
For more weeks than I care to admit, I’ve been reading Jose Saramago’s Journey to Portugal. Saramago makes it clear that he is not a tourist; indeed, Portugal is his native land. But he is a traveller, and there is scarcely a hamlet that he doesn’t cover in this tome.
I picked it up because we are going to Portugal this summer (in a couple of days, in fact), and I thought the words of a Nobel Prize winner might be good ones to take along.
The ones that strike my fancy now, though, apply not just to Portugal but to any journey. He uses them to describe the Roman ruins in the city of Evora.
The paths trodden by men are only complicated at first sight. When we look more closely, we can see traces of earlier feet, analogies, contradictions that have been resolved or may be resolved at some future date, places where suddenly languages are spoken in common and become universal.
“Traces of earlier feet…” — that’s an image I won’t forget.
Walking early today because it will be too hot to tromp around later, I took a different route out my front door, turning right at the corner instead of left. Then, at the next corner, choosing a path that runs along a four-lane road.
It’s one of my semi-regular walks, but I hadn’t taken it in a while, so I noticed how pine boughs crowd the sidewalk, how fast cars speed along beside the path, how close together are road and sidewalk.
How exposed I suddenly felt! For after all, what is a mere walker when confronted with tons of speeding steel?
(I realize I don’t take too many photos of cars on highways. I’m much more likely to snap bucolic shots like the one above.)
I often have a little debate with myself in the morning: should I walk first or should I write? I’ll do both eventually, of course. They are the warp and woof of my day. Twenty-four hours without them is barely a day at all.
But there remains the order. To walk early is to give the body precedence when the mind is sharpest. To write early is to miss the coolest and most pleasant hours of the day.
Today, walking raised its hand, waved it in front of my face. Choose me, choose me, it said.
And so … I did.
While I would like to say I always walk bare-eared, open to the sounds of wind in the pines and birds on the bough, in truth I am usually plugged in, listening to music or a recorded book.
Yesterday, I started out with one of these in mind, but as I began to amble along a forest path, I realized that I couldn’t pollute my ears. The only sounds that should enter them on such a pristine spring morning should be the sounds the morning itself produced.
It was a calm, quiet, meditative experience. I’m doing it again today.
A few days ago I met a friend for lunch in D.C. I parked in the Union Station garage and made my way past the old neighborhood: New Jersey and 1st Avenue, along E Street to the National Building Museum, where I stole a glance at those stunning columns.
From there to Chinatown, bustling again, though with way too many boarded-up stores. The restaurant we chose was still in business, though, and lively, to boot.
After that, a stroll down the Mall and over to the Botanic Garden and a cool outdoor exhibit/structure made of brush, a human-sized nest that kids were running in and out of.
I love the views of the Capitol you get from the Garden. It humanizes and softens the building, makes it seem more a part of the landscape. Which, of course, it certainly is.
It’s a sunny day that begs to be explored, and I have my usual dilemma: to move the muscles or exercise the mind. The mind usually comes first these days, because I start inside and it’s easier to stay here for a few hours.
And as bright as the light is, streaming into this morning room, the purring furnace tells me it’s still cold out there. I’m happy to wait until it’s purring a little less before I venture out.
Yesterday’s stroll was a hurried one: I threw on a down vest and dashed out the door. It wasn’t until I rounded the corner that I realized I needed a hat and gloves.
The frigid fast-walk refreshes and energizes … but I’m hoping for a warmer amble today.
Walkers usually keep to themselves. We’re an introverted bunch. But yesterday was different.
“Can you believe this day?” a woman said to me as she came closer, gesturing to the blue sky, her arms raised as if I were a long-lost friend.
I thought for a moment we might know each other, so enthusiastic was her greeting. But no, she was just a fellow traveler, her tongue loosened by the endorphins or the trail or the fact that we were both alive and well on a glorious spring morning.
