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Category: walking

Shoe Story

Shoe Story

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While I’ve never worn stiletto heels, I’ve always tried to look presentable at the office, footwear-wise. This has entailed keeping shoes at the office, since there’s no way I can walk long distances in pumps or even flats.

When I worked at McCall’s magazine years ago, my nickname was “Imelda” for the file drawer full of shoes I kept on hand. That was for Imelda Marcos, wife of Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos, whose 3,000 pairs of shoes were the stuff of legend, and which I learned today, take up the entire second floor of a shoe museum in the Philippines.

Back then, I had only about six pairs, not 3,000. And now, I have only three pairs, two black and one brown, no heel higher than an inch and a half.

Last week the shoes gathered dust because I bopped around the office in my tennis shoes every day, due to a taped-up right foot. It was delicious. My feet felt fantastic — and no one gave me a second glance.

I’m aware that wearing tennis shoes in the office is a slippery slope, though. What’s next? Slippers? Those big black shoes that grandmas used to wear in the old days? I’ve been telling myself to shape up. We must suffer to be beautiful, yes?

Which is all to say that I’m back to pumps and flats this week. It’s the only way to go.

Twilight’s End

Twilight’s End

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A walk yesterday that began in darkness ended in twilight, the kind that appears all at once, as if the earlier lack of visibility had been a mistake, something that a shake of the head could remedy.

I marveled at this, thinking it must have been my change of direction, even though I’d turned to the west. But going back, I had the light behind me, so what little there was of it lit my way.

I snapped off the flashlight; its pale yellow cone hadn’t helped much, but had at least illuminated the newly repaved street, the bumps and edges I’m just getting used to.

It’s about that time again now. The crickets are singing, the birds just beginning their chorus. Trees and leaves gaining definition, stepping out of the shadows.  I’m itching to be back outside.

A Dose of Common Sense

A Dose of Common Sense

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Walk as much as you like, the doctor said. Since he was a podiatrist, I took him at his word and did long loops through the neighborhood the last three days.

Turns out that the rowing I thought would be OK for plantar fasciitis actually is not, and the walking I thought would aggravate the condition actually doesn’t. Or at least it doesn’t while taking high doses of ibuprofen with a taped-up foot shot up with cortisone.

But 76 hours later, I’m walking better and in less pain. When you’re a walker in the suburbs, the temptation is to keep walking, even when it hurts. And when you’re me, the temptation is to try and remedy things on your own. Even when weeks turn into months.

What I learned on Thursday is … give the professionals a chance. They can do it in hours.


(Fun photo I took in Dublin that has absolutely nothing to do with podiatrists or walking.)

Floating to the Office

Floating to the Office

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I’m back on the Pentagon bus for a couple weeks, cruising into Crystal City on the early side, hopping off before my stop, hoofing it through south Arlington before 7 a.m. It’s pleasantly cool this morning, and already a hustle-bustle on the streets.

Joggers, yoga-goers with mats slung across their backs, the caffeine-starved piling in to Starbucks and, of course, the dog walkers.

I notice a new restaurant, a crane where there wasn’t one before, an empty lot with an abandoned grocery cart. The smell of croissants or French bread baking. Traffic noise, especially on East-West Highway.

It’s a 15-minute stroll to the office from the first bus stop, and I listen to the same piece all the way, Sleepers Awake, Bach’s cantata, times five. By the time I got here, I was floating.

(Photo from another city walk, in Philadelphia)

To the Corner and Back

To the Corner and Back

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After weeks of wimpy walking, nursing a case of plantar fasciitis, trying not to go too far or too fast, supplementing the strolls with 20 minutes on the basement rowing machine, I’ve realized something I’ve known all along but recognize more clearly with each passing week.

And that is … I’m not just walking for my health.

Even a slow stroll stimulates thoughts and ideas more than the most energetic rowing session. When I’m rowing, all I think of is, when can I stop. When I’m walking, I never want to stop.

This link between mind and feet is something I’ve written about often, and I’m not the only one. A New Yorker article lists fact after fact about how and why we think more clearly and more creatively when we’re ambling along a city street or woodland trail.

So if I have to raise my heart rate on the erg, I’ll do it. But walking will remain — even if it’s just to the corner and back.

August Greens

August Greens

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Who would think it possible that in this typically dry and dusty time of year we would have such a bounty of green?

On today’s walk I tried to revel in it, appreciate it. I tried to ignore the light rain that was falling even as I ambled.

It’s not the kind of summer I’m used to, but it’s the kind of summer we’ve got.

And so are the August greens.

The Walk Talk

The Walk Talk

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Yesterday, a walk through Arlington. A walk while talking, which is one of the best kind of walks, though you wouldn’t know it by the kind of solo walks I often describe here.

The walk talk is wonderful when it’s done with someone with whom one is simpatico — even if that someone is on the other end of a phone line, which was the case yesterday.

The walk talk makes the miles vanish and the heat dwindle. It’s not until you find yourself in a cool Metro station that you realize that yes, it was a warm afternoon for a charge up Clarendon Boulevard.

But by then it’s too late. The walk is over and the talk is too and though you are indeed rather wilted you are also super-charged by the movement and the conversation.

(Scenes from an Arlington walk, in another season.)

Grounding

Grounding

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I had no sooner written about Japanese forest bathing than I read about “grounding,” which is … walking outside barefoot. Grounding, also known as “earthing,” is a way of touching base with the essentials. Those who favor it say that it might help prevent chronic diseases, and research shows that it can improve sleep and lower stress.

Sounds touchy-feely (in more ways than one!) … and yet, consider this: One theory that explains the positive effect of grounding is that earth’s negative charge neutralizes the free radicals that can damage our cells. Antioxidants not from fruits and vegetables but from the earth itself.

And then there is the circadian rhythm aspect of grounding, the fact that touching ground can help regulate our autonomic nervous system, our breathing out and our breathing in.

The article in the Washington Post explaining this research ended with suggestions: Walk barefoot on ground or sand (something I’ll be doing in a few minutes, as a matter of fact!). Garden in the earth, or even lean against a tree trunk.

We are only beginning to understand how connected we are to the natural world around us.

Forest Bathing

Forest Bathing

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Shinrin yoku — Japanese for forest bathing — is the practice of immersing one’s self in a forest or other natural environment to relieve stress. Practitioners walk slowly through the woods, marveling at the shades of green.They aren’t there to bike down a hill or hike up a mountain. The journey is their destination. It is enough simply to be outside, to inhale the scent of pine.

I like the imagery involved, the idea that one can slide into a forest as if into a tub of warm water.  That its beauty will surround and calm and lift up.

A walk in the suburbs is not always a bath in the forest. It’s too fast, too purposeful. Often, there are no forests involved.

But even the briefest and most cursory stroll works its magic. I leave the house with fists clenched, brow furrowed. I return renewed and refreshed, reminded that we are not just creatures of rooms and screens. That after all, we are born of earth and will return to it, that every visit there is going home.

Natural Cool

Natural Cool

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We leapt from a rainy June to a sizzling July, and are now measuring the heat index instead of the precipitation.  On my slow walks this weekend I sought the relative cool of the shady stretches that line Folkstone Drive.

Is there any cool better than natural cool? I know what the air conditioning devotees will say. Of course there is. It’s the cranked-down chill of a 72-degree office or living room. And don’t get me wrong. On days when the mercury climbs toward 100, it’s mighty nice to step inside a well-chilled house.

But there is also something to be said for the deep woods, for ferns waving in a slight breeze, for soil that is still a bit moist from last month’s downpours, for a creek gurgling in the distance.

For sections of road where tree branches lace overhead and spread their shade to the pavement below. For old houses with thick walls flanked by tall oaks.

There is something to be said for natural cool.