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Hollowed Out

Hollowed Out

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It was about 20 degrees this morning when I went for my walk.For an hour I took paths I hadn’t taken in years, some never at all. There were hills and bridges, slight dips and a bounty of backyards to overlook and enjoy.

At the end I tried a shortcut that I thought would bring me out on the main road. It lead, instead, to a tall fence I couldn’t scale. So I retraced my steps at a run to return to the parking lot where I’d left the car. I was tired by the end.

Along the way the ground crackled beneath my feet as the frozen earth resisted my steps. There was a feeling of renewal in the cold, of being hollowed out and made whole again by it.

Parfait

Parfait

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No epiphany today, despite the date. In its place, some sights and sounds. On my walk this morning the eastern sky was streaked pink and orange, a parfait of dawn. As the sun rose and the sky lightened, contrails made lacy white stripes through the blue.

Birds were active today, jays and robins and crows all chirping and hopping and flitting about. I decided that bird song in the morning is a sure-fire way to improve the day.

At the end of my walk, I heard a strange bark-like noise and turned my head just in time to see a plump red fox trot through the meadow. He moved like our dog Copper does, with pluck and verve and a bit of a waddle. When he reached the woods he turned and posed, then ambled on. I felt his wildness in my bones.

A Start

A Start

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I was out early this morning, early enough that my breath still made clouds in the air, out with the earliest of moseying dog walkers. Lately I’ve been too busy to venture much farther than the loop walk in our neighborhood. But today I turned down West Ox.

It’s a road that was widened a few years ago — with a bonus for walkers, a paved path alongside it. You can walk this path for miles if you want — all the way to the shopping mall. Not that I’d want to.

Today I took it past several neighborhoods and a garden shop, a church and an old barn. As I strode, the sky pinked and the clouds fluffed and beams of light made it difficult to look up. (I had forgotten my sunglasses.) My eyes teared from the fresh air and the wind and the morning sun.

It didn’t look at all like this picture, but it was a good way to start the day.

The Old Route

The Old Route

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Yesterday I left the house early, and as the sun rose I was walking an old route I hadn’t been on in years. Some of the houses had additions, but other than that the scenery was just as I remembered it. The yards were just as deep and forgiving, the trees as lofty.

And the route itself: There was the same rise to the straightaway, the expansive section in the middle, the one that was such welcome shade in the summer, it made me happy in the winter, too.

I didn’t walk long, but I felt as if I had been on a brief vacation. Such is the power of landscape to reset the mood.

The Glade

The Glade

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Yesterday the sun rose blood red between the dark trees, and swirls of frozen fog lingered in the low parts of the land. It was a good day to leave the neighborhood and walk the Glade trail.

The Glade. I’ve always loved that name. It sounds like something out of Thomas Hardy’s Wessex. And I have great affection for this path since it’s one I’ve walked off and on for years.

But the Glade is not the place it used to be. A stream restoration project has elevated and opened up the creek bed, and what I noticed most was the gurgling of the water. Whereas before the creek was overgrown, muddy and still, now it is broad, open and brisk.

It was a lively place to be on a cold Sunday morning.

The Purpose of Walking

The Purpose of Walking

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Yesterday’s walks were mad dashes to and fro. That I was striding through liquid gold, that the air around me was as soft and inviting as any all autumn — I was vaguely aware of that. But I was so preoccupied in reaching my goal — a lunchtime errand, an after-work errand — that I didn’t slow down as I should.

Makes me think about how people used to walk. It was not for their health, it was not for their emotional enrichment. It was, simply, to get somewhere. And then to get back. There was a monotony and a sameness to it that must have worked against wisdom.

But still, walking has always had a purpose in our country. It has often meant freedom. “Being footloose has always exhilarated us,” said Wallace Stegner. “It is associated in our minds with escape from history and oppression … “

And later in this essay, Stegner quotes Gertrude Stein, who defines America in this way: “Conceive a space that is filled with moving.”

Movement through space is our heritage and our birthright. On my walk yesterday I was not alone in my oblivious striding. All around me, people were doing the same thing.

Homework

Homework

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Behind my back, the girls say, “Someone should tell Mom she doesn’t have to do all the reading.” But no one does. And it wouldn’t work anyway. I do all the reading gladly. And I take my time writing papers. I have fallen back into the old routine.

The last two times I was a student, I earned professional masters degrees. For 10 years, the classes I’ve been in have been ones I’m teaching.

So the class I’m taking now is just for fun. For intellectual re-engagement with the world. There is no need for excuses. The process is the point.

I had forgotten the ease of letting someone else do the work. Of sitting and listening, and not leading, the discussion. Of being all lit up by the ideas bouncing around my head. It’s good for a walker to have something to chew on while she treads the suburban paths. And I have more than my share these days.

Transported

Transported

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Yesterday after work I had one of those stray patches of time that appear in a day. Luckily, I had my walking shoes on, so I took to the hills. Sort of.

The hills I took to are part of a gas pipeline easement that runs through our part of the county. Because this land must be kept clear it offers an untrammeled view through the heart of suburbia. With a little imagination it could be a lower slope in the Scottish highlands. It has that sort of lilt and roll to it. For about a quarter mile I pretended, then I ran into a fence.

I finished my walk on a street that seemed wet behind the ears when we first moved here but seems now to have settled into itself. Houses have moss on their roofs and stories to tell. Trees lean into each other, as if to share secrets.

The sun was low in the sky, the air was soft and light. I wasn’t in Scotland, but I was transported.

Tropical Storm

Tropical Storm

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Out early for a walk before Irene, I push myself through puddles of air. There is little rain, only sporadic mist. But the sky is gray and heavy, as if tired of its burden, ready to shift it down to earth, to rest its shoulders for a while. And my steps are leaden, too, earthbound.

In the meadow there is barely any movement, just the faintest stirring of the goldenrod and grass. It is a welcome stillness; I pass only one cyclist and two dog-walkers. People are inside, sleeping or waiting for the storm. The quiet suburban paths are free for the taking.

It is a quiet late-summer morning. The “tropical” has reached us before the “storm.”

Stream Valley

Stream Valley

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A few days ago I walked a small section of the Cross County Trail, from Miller Heights to a rock bridge across Difficult Run. I was pretty close to Vale, I think, and I paused to read a sign about stream valleys and their value to indigenous people: rich soil, nuts and berries to forage, animals there for the same purpose and ripe for the hunting. Obviously water there, too. These green secluded places were early hunting and fishing grounds. They were home.

Now these same places are helping save the area as it once was; it is through the stream valleys that the Cross County Trail (which runs from one end of the county to the other) is threaded.

We walk the paths our ancestors walked. But we walk for different reasons. We walk our dogs; we walk for health. Our livings are made elsewhere. We work for money. We work for prestige. We come to the trail to work out.

But the shaded packed dirt of the Cross County Trail may yet give us back our lives. Or at least it may give me back mine — by helping me learn to love the place I’ve landed.