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Category: walking

Shank’s Mare

Shank’s Mare

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Today, my feet are in the suburbs but my soul is in the city. I’m missing New York City in many ways, especially in this one: walking there is purposeful. It’s about getting where you need to be, not taking 10,000 steps.

You don’t bother with the subway if you’re just hopping 20 blocks. Taxis are harder to come by than they used to be, and on Thursday night, Uber was asking $120 to take you from the Upper West Side to the Lower East Side. Yes, they are on opposite sides of the island, but come on!

Which brings us to shank’s mare, that most dependable mode of transportation. It might be hot and it might take a minute, but walking will get you where you need to be.

Yes, I rhapsodize about the practice of walking. It calms and inspires me on a daily basis. So much so that it’s easy to forget its original purpose, which is to get us from one place to another. In New York City, you don’t forget.

A Symphony

A Symphony

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If walking in the suburbs is a sonata, walking in the city is a symphony. It is the cued entrance of  countless well-tuned players, the trilling of a piccolo, the thrum of a timpani. It is pedestrians striding through the square and construction workers in hard hats taking a break. 

It’s a stroll on the High Line and a view of lower Manhattan from Little Island, the city’s newest park. 

It’s meandering through the West Village, down Bedford and Barrow, past the Cherry Lane Theater and on to Bleecker, where I’ll grab a Napoleon and watch ten white-habited monks who’ve come from Our Lady of Pompeii to buy some cannolis. 

It’s the plume of a fountain in Washington Square Park and the chess players and weed hawkers and pickup jazz bands that gather nearby.

It’s a trip to the Strand Bookstore (still there!) on the way uptown, then dinner at a hundred-plus-year-old bar and grill.

Four movements, none of them replicable. A city walk. A symphony. 

A Walking Trifecta

A Walking Trifecta

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I’m filing this under the category of “books and book reviews I wish I’d written” — a single article in yesterday’s print copy of the Washington Post that covered three books on walking — a trifecta of pleasure that has added three tomes to my must-read list.

In Praise of Walking: A New Scientific Exploration, by neuroscientist Shane O’Mara, describes the many benefits of walking, most of which I know but all of which I love hearing about again: how it helps protect heart and lungs and even builds new cells in the hippocampus.  

In First Steps: How Upright Walking Made Us Human, paleontologist Jeremy DeSilva explains the importance of bipedalism to human exploration, how it made possible the longer legs and shoes that have taken us to colder climes and, ultimately, even the moon.

Finally, the reviewer, Sibbie O’Sullivan, discusses Healing Trees: A Pocket Guide to Forest Bathing, which explores the Japanese concept of shinrin-yoku, immersing oneself in nature:

“Every page of ‘Healing Trees’ reminds us how separated from the world, from nature, from the trees, we’ve become,” writes O’Sullivan, who injects herself beautifully into the essay by describing her own walking, falling and resultant knee surgery. “Too often we take walking for granted,” she writes, “but we shouldn’t.” 

Drive to Walk

Drive to Walk

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Now that I have a little more time on my hands (emphasis on “a little” … but I’ll talk about that in another post), I often drive to walk. That’s drive to walk, not to work.

Before, I had meetings and deadlines that meant I would slip out of the house with 30 or 40 minutes only. No time for the 10-minute drive to my favorite Reston trail — only enough to get me up and down the main drag of my neighborhood.

Which is not a bad stroll. In fact, it’s still my go-to favorite, with houses and people I know and a path so familiar I could probably trudge it in my sleep.

But now I can mix it up a little, even though that means indulging in the great suburban irony — driving … to walk. 

(Bridge over Glade Creek on one of my favorite drive-to trails.)

Bikers and Bierstadt

Bikers and Bierstadt

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A late walk yesterday after the rain stopped. Trees still dripping, air cleansed, sun blazing bright just hours before setting.

I wasn’t the only one out and about. Neighbors were picking up their mail, stretching their legs, walking their dogs.

A bevy of bikers zoomed past, the usual Tuesday evening crowd. Except that nothing is usual anymore. I didn’t see them for a year, so spotting them again, watching them fly past (I could barely wrestle my phone from my back pocket in time to catch them) was the cherry on the sundae that was yesterday’s stroll.

As I walked back to the house, the trees were lit up like a Bierstadt painting. 

The Leveler

The Leveler

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It’s a flag-snapping, low-humidity day, the kind I was hoping to have all month long. Weeping cherry boughs are swaying in the breeze and the back door is open to the sounds of the day, which is strangely bereft of cicada song (more on that, or the lack of that, later). 

A walk took me through the neighborhood, up and down the main street and the cul-de-sacs, my new home route: longer, as befits my schedule, and slower, as befits my joints. 

Which gave me more time to ponder the grand equation, one seldom acknowledged but always there, somewhat akin to Newton’s Third Law — “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction” with a touch of Ecclesiastes — “to everything there is a season.” 

In other words, there’s a built-in leveler that sees to it that we are paid back for sweltering humidity with perfect days like these. 

Lake Anne, Part 2

Lake Anne, Part 2

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I’m so used to walking clockwise around Lake Anne that the other day when I strolled counter-clockwise with a friend I felt the world tilt a little. I also saw unexpected vistas. But this isn’t about that walk. It’s about three days later, when I went around the lake the right way (my right way, that is!).  Maybe I needed a stroll in the opposite direction to balance things out. 

Leaving the plaza behind, I passed quickly onto a wooded trail and then to a sunny embankment where morning light touched the tall grass.  

From there it felt good to slip into a shaded neighborhood, cool and inviting, lake water lapping at the shore. The townhouses here are some of Reston’s oldest (old being a relative term in Reston). I admire the variety of plantings, the lavender and roses, the whimsical touches.

Everywhere I looked was sparkling lake water, supporting a flotilla of kayaks or sending plumes of spray into the June sky.

I knew I’d come full circle when I reached an arched footbridge over a tributary. I wish I’d snapped a picture of that, too. But alas, it seems the only part of the walk I did not photograph. Next time …

Lake Anne: Part 1

Lake Anne: Part 1

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While I am in no mood for a staycation, I did feel like a tourist in my own town when I walked around Reston’s Lake Anne Saturday morning after buying strawberries at the farmer’s market.

I parked near a pedestrian tunnel and entered the plaza near the fountain. A brunch crowd was gathering at Local VA, an outdoor spinning class was in full swing, and merchants in booths were selling homemade ceramics, finger puppets, filmy scarves, imported rugs and hand-painted notecards. 

The big show was in the parking lot farmer’s market, where you could find tomatoes and greens and other seasonal delights. After I stowed the berries in the car, I walked around the lake, snapping photos as I strolled. More on the Lake Anne walk tomorrow …

The Afternoon Amble

The Afternoon Amble

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Twice this week I’ve found myself out for a jaunt not at 10 or 11 a.m. but at 3 or 4 p.m. It’s warmer by then, so I drive to the Glade Trail where tall trees arch across the paved walk and shade pools in deep pockets along the way. 

There are fewer cars parked along the road at that hour, fewer walkers, too. And the ones I see tend to keep their heads down. I’m fine doing that, too, so strolling at that hour tends to feel more solitary.

The air is heavier and the pace is slower, with time to sniff the honeysuckle or take a detour on one of the side paths that wind into the woods. 

On Thursday, the air was so steamy that I felt as slow-moving as the stream, now in full summer dawdle. Forty-five minutes in, I noticed that heavy clouds had moved in and there was a pre-storm excitement that made me pick up my pace. 

I hadn’t been home more than 15 minutes when the skies opened and rain sheeted the house and yard. 

An afternoon amble, just in time.

Eye Candy

Eye Candy

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Walking through an Eastside Portland neighborhood yesterday, I saw roses and rhododendron, lavender and wisteria, poppies and fuchsia. I saw tall fir trees tipped with new green growth. 

I didn’t actually dig into the soil, but from the profusion of bloom, it appears that most anything will grow here except maybe cactus. I’m not much of a gardener, but with inspiration like this I think I could become more of one. What struck me as I strolled was the pleasure these flowers bring to the eye. Looking at them felt elemental, as if I was taking sustenance from the stems, leaves and blossoms.