Out for a walk

Late yesterday afternoon I managed to do something rare for me: fit in a walk.

I love walking. Any terrain, any neighborhood, any time of year. And there have been phases of my life when I did lots of walking.

But not anymore. I did not anticipate that once I made a pledge to run every single day, walking would become a casualty of that decision. But on days when time is at a premium, which is so often the case, knowing I’ve already fit in a good run, taking a walk just doesn’t seem like a high enough priority.

Yesterday I had an excuse though. It was Back-to-School Night at our elementary school, so I ate an early dinner and headed up on foot. This was partly because I needed to be there at six o’clock for the activities fair and Rick didn’t plan to go until the classroom presentations an hour later, so my walking meant that we could drive home together. Parking gets tight when every parent of a school-aged child in town is up at the school on the same night, too, so it seemed sensible to do what we could to cut down on the problem.

But the bigger reason I did it was that walking invariably calms me down and clears my mind, and last night was no exception. It was a warm, humid, windy evening, the kind that usually means there’s a tropical storm somewhere on the East Coast. It was a comfortable temperature for walking, and the mile up to the school took me about twenty minutes, which was just about right for giving me some time to think without making me feel like I’d taken a lot of time away from anything else I should be doing.

Even though I walked the exact same route that I run every day, it felt different. Running is just so physically absorbing. When I run, I feel like I’m observing the scenery and taking in all kinds of sensory stimulation – the sounds of traffic or wind or birds, the smell of mulch or wildflowers or freshly cut hay – but in truth, more than anything I’m thinking about how it feels to be running. When I walk, I don’t think about walking. I feel like I’m noticing every sight, sound, smell. I feel like I’m part of the air, passing through the landscape, taking it in without touching it.

In a way, the metaphor is obvious. I never go walking because I’m always too busy running. Of course the message seems to be a cliché about stopping to smell the roses. But so often there just doesn’t seem to be time for a walk. There have been phases in the past when I walked a lot with my mother, but now my father is doing more walking while he recovers from medical problems so she has been walking with him. And when the dog was new, I walked a lot with her, but now she runs with me instead. Friends ask me if I want to go walking with them, but I tend to say “No, I took thirty minutes away from my desk to run this morning; I need to get work done now.” My kids don’t enjoy going for walks; when I can spend time with them, I let them choose an activity they prefer.

But getting out for a walk yesterday evening felt wonderful, even for just twenty minutes. It reminded me that nothing else feels quite like walking: simultaneously meditative and invigorating. I don’t want to give up the daily running, and I don’t think anyone fits in everything they want to do in a single day. But somehow I need to find more time for walks.