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Category: walking

Sky Bridge

Sky Bridge

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A late walk last night, strolling through sunset into nightfall. Crickets were chirping, bats were swooping and down at the corner the second-bloom honeysuckle was wafting its delicious scent over the distinctive odor of the manure fertilizer some homeowner had just spread.

We aren’t used to barnyard scents here in the suburbs. A few miles down the road is a little farm park where I used to take the children when they were young. There are plenty of pungent odors there.
But here it’s a sanitized suburban aroma.

But I was soon past it and on my way back. The day was darkening, and I couldn’t keep my eyes off the sky. Maybe because it was the lightest thing to look at — or maybe because I was listening to Chabrier on my iPod and thinking about Dad playing the same music decades ago.

What a link music becomes, a bridge between the living and the dead.

Skips in our Step

Skips in our Step

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There are so many ways to walk in this world. There’s trudging and strolling, ambling and sauntering, sliding and gliding, tromping and tramping, wandering and rambling, marching and striding, creeping and traipsing, hiking and slogging.

And then … there’s skipping.

When was the last time I skipped? Actually, it was today. But only for a second when no one was looking — and only because I already had the idea of writing this post.

The skip is the canter of human gaits, the waltz step for walkers. It’s a catch in the breath and in the stride. It’s a joyful, uninhibited motion, akin to running — but less work.

Unfortunately, however, it’s seldom practiced after the age of 10.

The taste of it I had this morning reminded me of its power and its fun. It is the most gladsome of movements. And in fact, if we practiced it more often it would be difficult to take ourselves seriously. For that reason alone, maybe it’s time we all put more skips in our step.

Country Walk

Country Walk

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Yesterday began in a meadow filled with chicory and mullein and Queen Anne’s lace. I brushed spider webs off my face and trudged through rain-dampened grass. The sun lit up each drop of moisture on the juniper berries — but it had hidden by the time we took a longer stroll.

Still, the rain held off for a four-mile walk up and down Swover Creek Road. We saw 18-century houses, vegetable gardens bursting with produce, a herd of cattle and an ancient cemetery that’s lovingly cared for by the current homeowner.

It was one glimpse of beauty after another. It was a reminder of a slower pace and a more intimate scale, the scale of the village, of homes spaced a few-minutes walk apart.

The walk tired, calmed and comforted me all at once.

Two Walks

Two Walks

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Rising early has its advantages, chief among them the chance to take two walks before breakfast.

My first was before 6:00 a.m., air still cool, crows still running the place. Their caws say “danger, danger, danger,” but not for me. I hear jays and hawks, too, plus the rise and fall of midsummer cicadas.

The second walk was a purposeful stride from Oakton High School to the Vienna Metro Station. It’s the closest place to park and not pay, so when the morning is luscious and I have the time,  I walk the mile instead of driving it.
The sights and sounds are different: Instead of crows I hear the whoosh of traffic noise, and the hawk’s cry is replaced by the shrill grind of metal-on-metal as a train lumbers into the station. 
But these are quibbles. It’s Monday. It’s morning. And … two walks are better than one.
(I took this en route to the Vienna Metro some years ago. The trees look like they’re walking, too.)
Grace, Visible

Grace, Visible

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It was early and I was walking, lost in thought, lost in sad thought if you want to know the truth. I looked up and saw a shaft of light piercing the shaggy tunnel of green that this stretch of Folkstone Drive has become.

There it was, brightness distilled and condensed, channeled from the heavens to the earth. Usually we can’t see sunshine because it’s all around us, a blessing we tend to ignore. But when it slants through the greenery as it did this morning, it reminds us of its presence. It comforts, inspires and motivates.

When I was young I used to think that grace consisted of the dust motes that floated through air. I’d heard that grace was invisible but all around us, and dust particles fit the bill. Today’s light shaft is a better candidate. It was, at least for me at that moment, grace visible.

Dutch Wave

Dutch Wave

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The headline caught my eye yesterday. “An inspiring green space in the concrete jungle.” Could it be the High Line? And yes, it was.

Gardening columnist Adrian Higgins wrote about the verdancy of New York City’s linear park, its stunning perennials and the way the wildlings (I love that word) mimic the flowers and weeds that flourished on the abandoned train line before it became an urban rooftop garden.

Higgins focuses on the plants themselves and the style of their plantings, as well as the man behind the beauty. Landscape designer Piet Oudolf is a leader of the “Dutch Wave” school of gardening, which is heavy on perennials and herbs and pollinators.

It’s nice to have a name for the pleasing combination of shaggy grasses and delicate flowers. Not that I will try to create it at home but so I can roll it around in my mind as I stroll, recreating the walks I’ve taken on the High Line, a place where plants and people come together so admirably.

(The perennials in my garden are not Dutch Wave.)

Civilized Pace

Civilized Pace

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Pre-dawn walks are becoming a habit. Made possible by early light, they remind me of early-morning runs when I lived in Manhattan. If I woke by 6:50 I could dash around the reservoir and be in the shower by 7:30 and on my way out the door at 8:00. By 9:00 or a little after I would be in my office sipping tea, nibbling a bagel and reading the Times.

No one arrived at McCall’s before 9:00 or 9:15 and no one bothered you while you read the newspaper — we were “looking for trends,” after all, so it was considered part of the workday. Ah, what a reasonable hour and civilized pace.

No one forces me to get in early now. It’s just the way I roll. But I like to remember a time when commuting meant hoofing it through Central Park, down Fifth, across 47th and over to Park.  Now that’s a walk!

(What I saw on the way to the office.)

Inside the Music

Inside the Music

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Brahms showed up in my classical queue this morning,. Not just any Brahms but the Symphony No. 1 — which happens to be the first orchestral piece I played as last-chair string bass in the Central Kentucky Youth Symphony Orchestra. I had only started learning string bass a few months earlier and didn’t have the hands for it, but I did my best to keep up with the runs and shifts.

My stand partner, Greg, helpfully penciled in “a la fakando” on a few of the more difficult sections, and fake it is exactly what I did. Every so often, Mr. Ceo, our fiery conductor, would scream “basses” and stare, it seemed like, straight at me. But I kept my head down and for the most part escaped humiliation.

Besides, it was worth it to be even a small part of such music: the swelling strings, the triumphant brass. In the heroic final movement, during the most lyrical sections, the basses only played pizzicato, but I put my heart and soul into every pluck.

This morning, walking and listening, I was back there again, not just listening to the music — but inside of it.

Walking Hots

Walking Hots

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Yesterday’s record-breaking heat brought the words “walking hot” to mind. And that made me think about walking hots.

I remember when my high school friend Susan had a summer job walking hots at Keeneland, Lexington’s jewel of a racetrack. It was the first I’d heard of this practice, and I immediately liked the term. It was pithy, and it required insider knowledge to understand.

“Hots” were thoroughbreds who’d just had their morning work-outs, and hot walkers were the ones who lead them around the ring or shed area until they cooled down. Hot walkers hold the animals while they are sponged down, then walk them some more. Thoroughbreds get sick if they decelerate too quickly. Unlike humans, they’re not allowed to go from 60 to 0 without proper attention.

Hot walkers are usually novices or interns, those on the lowest end of the thoroughbred-care team. It’s their job to slow down high-strung animals who are bred to run — and it must be both boring and terrifying.

Much easier to walk hot than to walk hots.

Meadow Trail

Meadow Trail

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Walking from a parking lot to the library this weekend I cut through an empty lot bursting with bloom. There were buttercups and daisies and plentiful purple self-heal. There was a shaggy, shrubby intensity to the overgrowth, a bursting-at-the-seams quality that is the soul of June and the soul of any meadow worth its salt.

A narrow path crossed the flowery expanse, just wide enough for foot fall, with tenacious roots that clawed their way across the dusty dirt. It was mid-afternoon of the hottest day yet this season, and the meadow lacked even a stick of shade.

I was in the epicenter of summer, a buzzing, blazing bounty of growth and color and aroma. I had places to go and errands to run — was expecting nothing more than a shortcut, a quick trot from A to B. I found instead a destination, a place of beauty and peace.