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Walking to Bedtime

Walking to Bedtime

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It stays light until almost 10 here on the western edge of the eastern time zone. Which means that if you take a stroll after a late dinner, you are walking until (almost) bedtime.  Cicadas give way to katydids and bats dart from tree shadows into a still bright patch of sky.

It’s cooler now, only 95 (!) with a hint of a breeze.  The hum of air conditioners is punctuated by the shoosh-shoosh of sprinklers. Roosting birds chirp as they dip into the short-lived puddles.

The evening is so calm and inviting that I stay out longer than I’d planned. Longer than my shoes are meant to go. But I’m drawn farther by the sight of orange-lit houses opening their windows to the street and by tree trunks darkening into nightfall.

I walked from day into evening; I walked to bedtime.

Long Afternoon

Long Afternoon

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Midday walk, less hot than the day before.  White clouds emerge in the sky, meaning there is less haze. I take a familiar route in the opposite direction, which is strangely disorienting. The pond is on my left, the woods on my right. I have to remind myself where I am.

I have to remind myself, also, who I am. I pass kids on their way to the pool. A pair of boys, eleven or twelve, pad by in flip flops with towels around their necks. All I hear of their conversation are the words “post traumatic stress.” A strange utterance; they look like they should be talking about the cannonballs they’ll do at the pool.

Still, they remind me of the great long afternoons of childhood,  the slow-moving stillness of the hour after lunch. I remember the smell of that hour, the hot sun on the swing, the grape candy stick, plans for later in the day, a trip to the park, wading in its cool creek.

I feel like a kid again for a few minutes, though it’s only because I was walking on my lunch hour, pretending for a few minutes that I have no responsibilities, only miles to walk and books to read.

The Walking Self

The Walking Self

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A cloudy, humid morning, the air a warm bath, out early before the day, and the thunderstorms, catch up with us. I spy a woman I’ve only seen walking — but this time she’s in front of her house. I have to look twice to be sure that it’s her. She looks far less jaunty pushing a lawnmower than she does striding along the street.

Which makes me wonder: Do we have a walking self? More confident and sure, a creature of motion not of pause.

I think that we do.

And if we walk far enough, and long enough, maybe the two selves merge.

Waking Up

Waking Up

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Up and out early. Moisture fills the air and glows in the lamplight. I play some Gabrielli but it’s too loud for this delicate time of day. I try Dan Fogelberg’s “To the Morning.” Ahhh; that’s better.

I consider turning off the music entirely and listening to the birds. They’re waking up and singing lustily. But the music is good, too. In fact, it sounds a lot like the birds, has the same gradual crescendo.

There are few cars on the street at this time of day, and the ones I see drive sleepily, as if they, too, are just waking up. The day seems to be holding its breath.

On the main road, cars are more numerous and faster. I ease into a trot. The tall grass is wet as I brush by it. Time now for louder music. “Day by Day,” a sung prayer.  I’m fully awake now. Ready to come home, touch the keyboard, write.

Shade Seeking

Shade Seeking

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I finished writing an article yesterday morning, which meant that I didn’t walk until noon. But I found a trail with only dappled sunlight and fast-walked there. No sun. No sunscreen. No visor.

The summertime world is all about light, from the earliest gray dawns to the latest pearl twilights. But I’m trying to walk less in full sun this year, to choose my path carefully so that — at least at high noon — there will be blessed shade.

This is counter to every sun-loving bone in my body. But it’s to preserve my body, well, most particularly my skin, that I’ve suddenly become a shade seeker.

I’m coming to appreciate the play of light on tree trunks, the wagging of oak leaves high in the canopy, the trails that wind along the stream. There are animals, plants — even ideas — more visible in the shadows than anywhere else.

The Toll

The Toll

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Last evening, a walk I’ve never taken: A path between two houses to a woodland trail, and along that to another neighborhood. From there to a busy road, left past the shopping center and left again down a street where we once looked at a house to buy. It was faux Tudor and smaller than it looked outside.

I was deep into nostalgia, what-ifs. The yards were edged and tidy with fresh-strewn mulch. I noticed  the brave annuals planted by the mailboxes. The flower boxes and hanging baskets. The lawns were a proud, chemical green; most were new-mown and they sparkled in the slanting light.

Beyond the house life and the car life lies the curb life, the walker’s view. This walker has become more sympathetic over the years. More aware of the toil — and the toll — of the suburbs.

Flow in Motion

Flow in Motion

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“It is normally easy and actually quite pleasant to walk and think at the same time, but at the extremes these activities appear to compete for … limited resources,” writes Daniel Kahneman in his book Thinking Fast and Slow.  “My experience is that I can think while strolling but cannot engage in mental work that imposes a heavy load on short-term memory.”

Without going into the nuances of Kahneman’s theory (in large part because I’ve just started the book and am still figuring them out!), what he’s saying here is fairly straightforward: There is only so much energy to go around, and it’s difficult if not impossible to expend great mental and physical effort at the same time.

In my experience, walking promotes thought. The mental briars that entangle me when I’m sitting still aren’t present when I’m skimming along a trail. Motion accelerates thought, enlarges it, shakes it free.

The explanation is, in part, speed. Were I to run I would think a lot less. But the answer also lies in something Kahneman discusses a few paragraphs later,  the concept of flow, “a state of effortless concentration so deep that [people] lose their sense of time, of themselves, of their problems.”

What happens when we walk (or at least when I walk) is flow in motion. Which sounds redundant. But actually isn’t.

Escape Route

Escape Route

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A few days of blissful low-humidity weather mean that at the highest point of my favorite walking route the foothills of the Blue Ridge swing cleanly, clearly, briskly into focus. I like to think of this as my “escape route,” the one that gives me, better than any other, a glimpse of a world that lies beyond.

For the longest time the route — and for all practical purposes the view — didn’t exist. The road was curvy, two-lane and treacherous. You walked it at your peril. And even if you did, you wouldn’t have seen the mountains. They would only have been visible from the ridge above — and probably not even there, since the trees that grew along the brow obscured the horizon, too.

But when a new housing development shoved out the few remaining homes and a preschool, the view emerged. And the sidewalk supplied by the property developers opened it up to all.

I had to stop griping about progress then. For once it was on our side, the side of the walkers, the side of those who like to be reminded where they are in the world. The side of those who like their escape routes.


(This is not exactly what I see. My view is of the same mountain range, just farther east.)

Birds Take Flight

Birds Take Flight

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“Every day,  I walked. It was not a meditation, but survival, one foot in front of the other, with my eyes focused down, trying to stay steady.”

This is from Terry Tempest Williams’ new book When Women Were Birds. A few pages later, Williams writes: “I am a writer about place who is never home.”

I link these two passages. The walking and the writing about place.  Each essential to the other. One to prime the pump, the other to fill the jug with cold, clean water.

So where do the birds come in? Williams meets her husband at a bookstore, as he’s buying a bird guide. Williams finds her voice through a special teacher who reads to her about the winter owl. A peregrine falcon once slit the corner of Williams’ eye. Another time, Williams sees a painted bunting that arrived in a wintry Maine on the cusp of a fierce winter storm.

“When dawn struck his tiny feathered back, he ignited like a flame: red, blue and green. … I have not dreamed of white birds since.”

When I finished Williams’ book I flipped through the pages with my thumb — and saw the birds that illustrate the outer edge of each page fly back and forth as if alive.

Birds take flight. So do words.

Long Evenings

Long Evenings

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After dinner, almost dark — I work in a quick walk around the neighborhood. The sounds of the day mingle with those of the night. I hear a catbird settling in a maple tree, and, at the same moment, a chorus of crickets from a hedge beside the road.

The peepers are gone now but tree frogs are already serenading us. Wind chimes and soft music waft across the street from our neighbors with a front porch.

In a few weeks the pool will be open and the sun setting even later. Long evenings soothe and invigorate. We can live without them — don’t we prove it every winter? — but it was hard last night to imagine how we do.