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Category: walking

The Detour

The Detour

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They’re working on Fox Mill Road, the quasi thoroughfare, quasi byway that links me to Metro and beyond. Conveniently, the detour starts just beyond my neighborhood, so at least for now the way home and back is clear. What isn’t convenient is that the detour runs right through my neighborhood.

Which meant that last night wasn’t the best evening to go for a post-dinner stroll. Still, that’s what I did — complete with headlamp and reflective vest.

It was busier than a typical Monday evening. I found myself stepping off the road more times than I would like. But even the higher-than-usual car volume couldn’t mar the peaceful evening, couldn’t banish the night sounds, lift the heavy air or blunt the honeysuckle scent that almost overpowered me at the corner.

The walk was my detour, too, a departure from my normal routine, my own diversion from the day.

Late-Day Stroll

Late-Day Stroll

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Copper and I had a delicious late evening walk the other night. There was a sliver of a fingernail moon just setting in the west, along with the sun.

There were birds darting everywhere, finishing up their late-day chores before bedding down for the night. There were bats, too, I suppose, just starting their day, though we didn’t see any.

Mostly, we just strolled at the pace that has become our own, which is to say much slower than either of us goes individually. He sniffed, I mulled. It was meditative, like pacing a labyrinth.

It was the perfect way to end the day.

Sun Screen

Sun Screen

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Driving to Metro this morning I was squinting most of the way. It was full-on sun as I headed east. An early, low sun that slanted beneath my visor and almost blinded me at times.

I was counting on this sun, hoping it would warm the air and brighten the day. And it was complying. But it was doing it with such urgency that I felt within it the slow, sluggish air of July.

It was then — and later, as I loped around the block a couple times waiting for the bus — that I felt grateful for my sunglasses. When I put them on, the glare goes away, and I feel cooler, in more ways than one.

Even more than that, I feel protected, tucked away. As if the glasses screen me not just from the sun but from everything else, too.

A Moment

A Moment

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Yesterday before my own evening walk, I took Copper for a short stroll. It was warm and breezy. We did our usual, torn-doggie-ACL-shortened amble. Before heading home we walked into the Morrison’s yard so I could pick up a throwaway paper that was left there.

And then, without warning, I had a moment. The wind was lifting pink blossom petals from the weeping cherry and swirling them around in a kind of pink snow. Two strings of wind chimes were rattling in a disjointed harmony. Copper, who can be cantankerous, was being sweet. I was aware of the softness of his fur and his big brown eyes.

I was overcome suddenly with a feeling of fulfillment, a realization that this is what it’s all about: walking the dog at the end of a long day, dinner still to get, labors ahead of and behind me — but in this moment free to breathe deeply, to listen and to think.

Happy National Walking Day!

Happy National Walking Day!

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It’s the first Wednesday in April, which the American Heart Association has deemed National Walking Day. You can go on their website and read about the health benefits of walking, the best warm-up stretches and how to prevent injury.

Notable to me is the word “National.” Most countries don’t need a Walking Day to get their citizens up and moving. In many parts of the world, if you don’t walk you don’t work and you don’t eat.

I see no need to extol the benefits of walking more today than other days. There’s a reason why I named this blog A Walker in the Suburbs. But I will point out that in one of my favorite cities in all the world, walking is not just popular on National Walking Day but all year long.

New York City is a walker’s paradise. It’s the place Alfred Kazin describes in A Walker in the City, to which this blog tips its hat. It’s no coincidence that lively walking cities are lively cities, period.

There is something about a human that loves a walk. And what better day to remind ourselves of that?

Brave Buds

Brave Buds

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Before the leaf and flower, trees take on a vague pink sheen. On closer inspection the sheen turns out to be clusters of budding branches. But from afar, when caught in a spurt of sunshine on a breezy day, they seem to gleam with a light pink halo.

It’s the maples, the brave ones, showing us the way. It’s not that hard, they say. It’s a matter of faith, of reaching to your highest branches, letting the life-force flow.

On a walk this weekend I snapped photos of trees and shrubs in various states of bloom. I thought about anticipation, potential, that which is worth waiting for. Surely there are spring shots lovelier than these.

But to me these speak to the heart of the season, that from the gray trunks of winter come a riot of bloom. That summer greens would never happen without these brave buds.

Walking Outside

Walking Outside

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An elliptical machine is a wondrous thing. It allows me to walk in all weathers and at a time that suits my schedule, from 5 a.m. till 8 p.m. What it can’t do, nor would I want it to, is mimic the sights and sounds of the walking world.

I often write of the psychic benefits of walking, which to my mind rival the health effects. I can get a buzz from the elliptical, but it’s not the same as the lift I get from walking outside. Take the random interactions, for example.

First, there was a short walk with Copper, where we ran into neighbor Nancy, who I’d just seen last week at a neighborhood gathering. We exchanged pleasantries as the little guy pulled at his leash.

Later, on my own solo stroll, I saw Nancy again, as well as the couple who are adding a gigantic garage onto their house, and another woman with curly gray hair who’ve I’ve seen walking but had never before linked with her house. This time I saw her checking her mailbox.

I don’t know all these people well; some I just nod to. But they’re the human heart of the walk. Some of them have lived here as long as we have; they give the place character and depth.

So I’m thankful for the elliptical because it’s kept me sane this winter. But I’m thankful for the outside walk, too. It’s what life’s all about.

Restorative

Restorative

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I had One of Those Days. Suspicious activity detected on a work computer so I spent hours reconfiguring passwords. A long, frustrating task with nothing to show for it at the end but (I hope) greater security, which I too often assume is mine anyway (though not as much as I used to).

Once home, though, there was a restorative: seeing the world from a dog’s perspective. Time to smell the roses, or rather, sniff them. And not roses, not yet, but buttercups and snowdrops, which I spied on our brief stroll.

I took some deep breaths, looked up at the sky, caught the flash of a sun-lit contrail.

It was 7 p.m. and still light enough to take a walk outside. All’s right with the world.

Tunneling

Tunneling

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The thermometer read 32, just as it did yesterday. But yesterday it was sleeting and icing; today it’s “only” raining. Dark, gray, cold and wet — but somehow precipitation that remains liquid.

And so, I put into place my own winter emergency plan. No riding the bus from Courthouse Metro. I took my chances on Metro all the way. Most of all, no outside walking from Metro to the office. Instead, I took the tunnel.

The tunnel is longer but ever so much more pleasant, especially on a day like today. It’s a weird feature of this neighborhood, something about its spook-driven origins.

It’s a warren of passages, steps up and down. I passed a barber shop, an optician, a branch library and an experimental theater. I walked down a hallway with art on the walls.

It was warm, it was dry. It was divine.

A Walker Turns Nine

A Walker Turns Nine

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When I started this blog nine years ago today, I saw it as a chance to do my own work without the editor on my shoulder. It still is that — but much, much more.

Because when I started this blog, I was nine years younger, you see. I knew time was passing quickly, but not this quickly! I thought there would be plenty of years to write another book, pen dozens of essays, do all sorts of things. I hope there still is. I see no reason why there shouldn’t be.

But if there’s not … there’s this blog. It has become an oeuvre of sorts, a body of work, a folder into which I stuff random thoughts, ideas from books, the gleanings of a brain that works best when the feet are moving at three miles an hour.

As I said in the beginning and each walk confirms, writing and walking are boon companions. One informs the other.

So this walker plans to keep on walking and keep on writing until … well, until she can’t do either anymore.