A Walker in the Suburbs

A welcome blast of cool air has revived our mornings, and I wake up ready to run. It’s interesting how habit dictates one’s timing and route. I always used to walk in the morning, but that was before I started writing in the morning. Now my mornings are like the lead paragraph in a complicated article. There is so much I want to put in them that they sometimes collapse from their own weight.

And my walks, I might postpone them till noon or later. But of course, you only get so many newborn hours in a day. I miss the silken start of a day that begins on foot. But not today. Today I’m out the door and on my way.

I became a runner when I lived in Chicago, but I became a walker when I lived in New York. I ran here, too, looped the reservoir a couple of times in the morning when I lived off Central Park and, when I lived downtown, made the World Trade Center my turnaround point.

But when I think of locomotion in New York City, I think of walking most of all. Because it is so crowded here, walking can feel like navigating, looking down at the feet coming toward you, figuring out how to sidestep them. It’s a choreography, a dance. But when you hit an open stretch of pavement you can rev into high gear.

Then the short blocks fly by and the bridges, too. And all the faces coming toward you seem full of good will, though you know it’s the endorphins making you feel that way. But you don’t care because you’re walking, no flying, down the streets of New York, and you feel like you’re home again.

My blog post counter is a little off, but sometime in the last few days I wrote my 400th post. To celebrate, here’s a photo of a favorite woodland path. It’s not one I’ve walked often lately because it’s part of my “short loop,” but looking at it here, the late day sun slanting through the trees, I think I’ll find a way to include it more often.

What you don’t see in this photo is the dog pulling on his leash, my attempts to hold him and the camera, or the thicket you must plow through to reach this canopied clearing.

What you do see, I hope, is a landscape that asks for understanding and that offers, at least on clear May afternoons, a brief measure of peace.

It was my first time so I wanted to make a good impression. I parked the car at the high school and hiked to Metro. At the office I made more trips to the water cooler, mailbox and colleagues’ offices. At lunchtime came the big kahuna — a fast walk to the mall and back. At the end of the day I was well over the 10,000 recommended steps. But come on, I’m a walker in the suburbs. What else could I do? Which is why I must wear the gizmo again. Wear it and forget about it.

I push aside questions of motivation and ambition — what kind of person shows off for a tiny gadget attached to her waist, something that no one else can see? I give myself a break. It was my first time. The pedometer made me do it.

Photo of Sportline ThinQ pedometers from Slippery Brick

It is a day of clouds and sun, of wind and flower. I have yet to walk; I’m about to now. But I can tell from the weather that the wind will challenge, the sun will warm and maybe the rain will fall, too. It will be a walk that is not unlike life.

I found in my photos a snapshot of a small windmill, a decorative one, I think, but suitable enough for illustration. It makes me think about how much a day can buffet us and how important it is to have a compass, something that helps point the way, that keeps us on track. Something that keeps us heading down our own truth path, steady to our own true north.

Among the many advantages of walking in the suburbs is this one: It is difficult to read a newspaper while doing it. Am I the only one who feels that there is almost too much bad news to absorb these days? Chaos in the Mideast. Nuclear peril in Japan. A humanitarian crisis in Darfur.

Today’s only good news (Kentucky’s two-point win over Ohio State in the final seconds of the NCAA “Sweet Sixteen”) happened too late to make it into the Washington Post. And so, I close the newspaper, lace up my walking shoes and take to the pavement. It’s my way to make things make sense.

I walked this morning before the sun rose. It was cold, and the flashlight in my hand was heavy enough to double as a weight. The moon was bright but waning. I heard an owl in the woods.

To walk in darkness diminishes landscape but broadens possibility. I could be a walker in the city or the country instead of the suburbs. I could be almost anywhere.

But because the traveler takes herself wherever she goes (Montaigne?), I was most of all in my own thoughts. I was pondering the freedom of darkness, how not knowing what lies ahead can liberate us from the here and now.