Autumn Walks

Once, when I was walking three miles every morning, it suddenly felt as though I were gliding on roller skates.  My steps were evenly timed, constant and quick and my three mile trek went by fast.  But one morning, I became anxious when I found myself without enough time.  I raced home from work that night, tied on my sneakers and started down the driveway.  It was only then that the anxiety disappeared and it was the first time I made the connection that walking felt like skating.  The feeling was so real and natural, I was almost convinced passerby’s would think I was skating too.

This continued until one frigid day at 5:30 am in December.  I crossed the street at the end of the driveway and slid onto a large patch of black ice.  As I felt it crackle from the weight of my knee cap, I asked myself what I was doing.  It was freezing and it was dark and I was no longer gliding but crouched alone rubbing my knee and ankle in a wet puddle just yards from the warm glow of my bedroom lamp.

I could have bought special runner’s shoes to keep walking in winter but instead I took the easy way out.  I stopped and stayed in bed.  But to my credit,  I never stopped “taking walks”, however.  Even today – especially today during our global pandemic – I still walk almost everyday.  The difference is I no longer “skate”.  I amble…

My walking is leisurely now – it’s more roaming than anything else.  And I’ve discovered some interesting things about my neighborhood that I would never have known if I were still power walking.  I finally identified the house with the wood stove that smells so delicious on dusky November nights.  And how did I never know that I live near a small abandoned quarry with a stone outbuilding crumbling but oddly intact?  My favorite walk is to visit this steely grey edifice which I only discovered by taking a chance on crossing a rickety footbridge nearby.  Anne Shirley would have found much for her “scope for imagination” in that quarry and might even have given it an elaborate romantic name.

I think of Anne Shirley a lot when I walk these paths.  She would have loved spying on the stately heron that dips into the mossy pond behind the high school at certain times of the day.  And the pair of swans that glide across the tiny reservoir one can find by following a low stonewall that actually begins in my own backyard.  Who knew?

Now that I have more time, I’ve begun reading a local historian’s weekly columns in our village newspaper.  Recently, he wrote about a regal lady named Blind Betsy who carried a basket of empty spools on the top of her head to the local textile mills every day.  One morning I drove to Stony Lane so I could walk where proud Betsy walked and imagine the life of the 19th century woman who took the matter of her independence into her own hands.  How Blind Betsy managed the endless and rutted Stony Lane is awe-inspiring and meditating on her was empowering.

These walks have indeed been meditative but they also keep me optimistic during this harrowing time.  Beside Betsy’s difficult life, if a quarry built in the 1700’s whose wall can still be seen defiantly standing, surely it means there is hope for us.

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I intend to continue my walks through winter.  So many people are walking these days.  Are you?