Blearily we walk along

Following yesterday’s appointment with the ophthalmologist, I was hoping to get home in time for a walk before starting dinner preparations.

But when I left the eye doctor, I remembered that one of my car’s headlights had burned out over the weekend, and I was only ten minutes away from the dealership.

“An hour and a half, maybe two hours,” the customer service rep estimated for the repair. So I wouldn’t be home in time for a walk. Which is why I ended up taking a walk along Route 2A in Littleton yesterday afternoon instead.

There were numerous problems with this plan. When relinquishing my car to the repair bay, I’d left my sneakers in the trunk. I was still wearing leather flats without socks.

Also I’d brought my laptop with me in case I had time to get some work done, so the laptop and case would have to go along on the walk as well.

Moreover, Route 2A is not the most scenic place to go walking. It’s a highway, though it does have a curbed sidewalk. But the scenery didn’t actually matter much, because I had just had my eyes dilated at the eye doctor and could hardly see in the bright sunlight anyway.

Walking along the edge of Route 2A, it occurred to me many times that I must look somewhat unhinged. Dressed for work, carrying a laptop, blindly squinting in the sun, out for a walk.

It was one of those times when I had to seriously weigh the burden of knowing I looked ridiculous against the rewards of fitting in a walk.

The rewards won. I walked around the dealership’s several large parking lots, and then down the road to a supermarket plaza. I was happy to find places to walk that were safely out of traffic. My shoes, though not ideal for walking, weren’t all that uncomfortable. My laptop didn’t feel too heavy. I was just glad to be out walking.

As I squinted my painfully dilated eyes against the sunshine and made my way around the parking lot and then along the highway to the supermarket again for one last lap, I took comfort in the fact that at least it was very unlikely that anyone would recognize me. I was nowhere near home, and I know only two people who live in Littleton. And one of those two people is my cousin, who was spending the year in Colorado.

Then I remembered seeing a Facebook post earlier that day from my cousin. She was actually moving back to Littleton. She had left Colorado by car three days ago. At the time she posted, around lunch, she was at the New York/Massachusetts border.

She could drive past at any minute.

Would she recognize me? I wondered. Would she think, there’s my nutty cousin, striding along the highway in work clothes and flats, carrying her briefcase, shading her puffy eyes?

Or would she just wonder how the town and its populace had gone downhill so fast in her absence?

In general, I think it’s worthwhile to care about appearances. That’s why I ask at least one other member of my family if my outfit looks okay before I leave for work every morning, and why if something seems a little bizarre even for me – like powerwalking along a highway in office clothes at rush hour – I try not to do it.

But yesterday I just really wanted to fit that walk in. Blindly and inappropriately dressed, I walked. And it was worth it. I was happy to have fit in a good walk. I was also really happy when it was over.

But mostly, I was happy I did not see my cousin.

And as far as I know, she didn’t see me. But of course, I can’t be sure. With my dilated pupils in the hot bright sunlight, I couldn’t see a thing anyway. Including my own reflection in the storefronts I passed. And that’s probably a very good thing.

Don't belittle us Fitbitters

My husband had a medical appointment on the fourth floor of a building I’d never visited before, and the receptionist suggested I wait for him at the café one flight up. I followed her directions to the elevator, and when I got there, found myself thinking, “Most buildings have a staircase right near the elevator; I should find it and walk.” Not surprisingly, the staircase was easy to find, and once I was in the stairwell, I had another thought. “If there’s a fifth floor, there’s probably a sixth floor. Maybe a seventh and eighth floor. Let’s go see.”

So I started walking upstairs. It turned out the building was nine stories tall.

Not so long ago, this would have seemed like a rather frivolous use of time to me. But now I’m a Fitbit user, or Fitbitter, as I prefer to say, and no amount of physical activity is too frivolous to pursue.

Other Fitbitters understand exactly what I mean. By way of explanation for those not yet familiar with this new piece of gadgetry, a Fitbit is a small device that you can wear either as a pendant or as a bracelet. As you go about your day, it measures your steps, miles covered on foot, minutes of high aerobic activity, stairs climbed, and calories burned. And we Fitbitters find ourselves doing the nuttiest things to boost those simple numbers.

Some of this information – the metrics surrounding physical activity – is not new to me. As a long-time runner, I’m quite accustomed to measuring mileage. And as a daily “streak” runner, I’m accustomed to counting days of my streak as well.

But Fitbit is different because you don’t set it just for exercise. There’s no on/off function to denote when a particular activity begins and ends. It measures literally every step you take during every 24-hour period. If I’m up at 3 a.m. to use the bathroom, it registers the 18 steps from bed to the bathroom and back. At work, if I walk from my desk to the photocopier, Fitbit credits me with the steps. If I walk upstairs to get something, forget what I’m there for, walk back downstairs, remember what I wanted, walk upstairs again, retrieve the item, and return downstairs, Fitbit counts every step and each staircase as well.

And this is what makes us Fitbit users a little crazy. Whereas once we might have tried to economize on, say, trips from aisle to aisle in the supermarket, now every time we double back for an overlooked item gives us a few more steps. No parking spaces near the door? No problem – the extra walking means extra steps! One Fitbit user complained that her newfound obsession had the unintended consequence of making her teenage sons even lazier: now they know they don’t need to get up and fetch their own glass of water, because she’ll do it just a score a few more steps.

Back in my 20s when I began my pursuit of fitness, much was made of the fact that the human body has to spend at least 20 minutes in the target zone of 70% above resting heart rate before any fat is burned. Therefore, to be productive, we insisted back then, aerobic activity has to go on for at least 20 minutes.

This vague grasp of exercise physiology resulted in my unwittingly internalizing the thought that by extension, activity that goes on for less than 20 minutes is useless. If I couldn’t fit in a run or even a walk that lasted at least 20 minutes, I wouldn’t bother to run or walk at all.

And while the exercise physiology hasn’t changed – it does still take 20 minutes in the target aerobic heart rate zone for the body to burn fat rather than muscle – the Fitbit makes even the shortest journey on foot count for something. Last week, I arrived at work ten minutes early, so I took a ten-minute walk, knowing it would earn me a few hundred more steps on the daily meter. Not long ago, I wouldn’t have considered a ten-minute walk worth changing my shoes for.

But the appeal is philosophical as well as practical. The message of the Fitbit is that every little bit counts. Maybe you can’t do a five-mile run, but you can still get a few hundred steps in by taking a ten-minute walk. That’s a message about exercise, sure, but I would argue it’s also a message about life.

Good deeds, courageous acts, and noble gestures can’t be measured by a digital timer on your wrist the way steps can. But the Fitbit reminds me daily that doing just a little bit, whether it’s steps or something more altruistic, is better than nothing. Do what you can, even if you can’t do all you might wish. A little bit can still help. Anything is more than nothing. And far beyond calories burned or fitness goals achieved, that’s a lesson well worth learning.

The woods were lovely, dark and deep....'til we arrived

“The woods are lovely dark and deep, but I have promises to keep,” I said to myself as I looked out the bedroom window across the berm and into the trails of the state park while getting ready for work this morning.

Except that unlike Robert Frost’s woods on a snowy evening, the woods weren’t dark, because it was only 10 a.m. Just lovely and deep.

And the only promise I had to keep at the moment was the one to be at the office in another three hours, since I was working a half-day.

The woods are lovely and deep, I said to myself, retrofitting the poem to my own circumstances, and the promise I have to keep is the one that I would try to be more direct in pursuing the things I want, rather than expecting them to fall into my lap. It was the closest thing I had to a New Year’s resolution for 2014, and two days before the first of the New Year, it hung over my head as I looked out at the bare trees and snowy ground cover.

It’s a perfect day for a walk in the woods, I told myself, contradicting the sentiment of the Frost poem that had come to me so easily. Because we’ve gone more than a week without fresh snow, the trails in the state park are temporarily closed to skiers, which means walkers and even dogs are welcome there. The temperature was a comfortable mid-30s, with predictions of colder weather to come, along with more snow, which would mean the trails would be restricted to skiers once again.

If ever there was a winter morning for walking in the snowy woods, I told myself, this is it.

But it wasn’t just me. I wanted the kids to come along also. And they are not generally winter hiking enthusiasts.

I pitched it to them the same way I had ultimately pitched it to myself. Limited opportunities for using the trails in the winter. Nothing else on the schedule. Not too cold.

And then I pleaded a little bit. “I really really really want to do this,” I told them. “It would be a big favor to me.”

But it turned out I might not have had to work quite that hard, because they shrugged and said once they were done with breakfast, they’d go.

Just as I’d imagined from the bedroom window, it was a beautiful day to be in the woods. The snow was packed and crunchy underfoot, the air crisp but not too cold.

Nonetheless, it wasn’t quite the walk I imagined. Not the walk I would have taken by myself, anyway. I imagined trekking quietly through the snow, immersing ourselves in the beauty of winter, but that’s not how my kids roll. Or rather, that’s not how my kids hike. There were piggy backs and horseplay; deliberate slipping and sliding and innocuous collisions. There were shouts of “Oh no, wolves!” delivered in falsettos of mock horror. There was much hilarity over the challenge of fastening the dog’s new winter coat around her torso and not letting her shake it off.

Their style of hiking is different from mine. Ideally I probably would have had it both ways: their company, but also the meditative silence and observance of nature with which I like to tromp through the woods.

Instead, I got their company, the walk I wanted, and a good deal of shrieking, shoving, laughing and chasing.

Which was fine also. To any other abutters of the state park, looking out their own bedroom windows and contemplating a winter walk, the woods may have seemed a little less lovely, dark and deep with the three of us plus the dog flailing and cavorting our way through.

But it was a good walk nonetheless. Because the woods really are lovely, dark and deep. And I felt very lucky to be making my way through them, along with two kids and a dog, this morning.

Walking and talking

Somehow a full year had gone by since I’d last visited my college roommate at her beachside home, and it was time for us to have our annual catch-up.

We take our yearly catch-up visits seriously. With her four children and my two, plus our husbands’ work lives and other activities, plus our siblings and parents, plus our friends and our respective community projects, plus the books we’ve read, the vacations we’ve taken, and the crises we’ve endured  since we last got together, plus the fact that we simply have loads of interests in common, there’s always a lot to talk about. And we see each other only a couple of times a year. But the best catch-up is always our annual October Walk, when we take an eight-mile stroll on the beach, beginning outside her back door, down alongside the Atlantic to the village south of hers, where we stop for lunch, then around town and onto the cliff walk overlooking the water, and then back.

She has a daughter finishing college and another one just starting the application process. One daughter has learned to drive and the youngest competed in the Nationals track qualifiers this past summer. She didn’t qualify for the Nationals, but the family had a wonderful time in New York anyway, and as we walked I heard all about it. I talked plenty myself also – about Tim starting high school, Holly starting a second year on the cross-country team, my various freelance assignments, Rick’s enthusiasm for his job.

We could sit down for four hours and have the same conversation, but somehow it doesn’t seem like it would be quite the same. As my friend pointed out yesterday, there was one year that our plans were rained out and we went out for dinner without taking a walk, and that year was fun, but not quite the same as the years we walk. It’s just so exhilarating to cover so many miles on foot while we cover so much ground in our personal lives through our nonstop dialogue. We’re usually out about four hours. Then we end our walk, pause the conversation, take a deep breath, get ready to say goodbye.

Like all traditions, it can’t go on forever, but I’m so happy we’ve sustained it as many years as we have. The physical exertion of walking for miles on the beach feels so rewarding, and the emotional sustenance we take from our annual visit is equally so. It’s good to walk and good to talk. And best is to do both – walk and talk – together. An annual tradition, and something to look forward to every fall.

The woods are calling

It was a productive Sunday afternoon. I’d just finished dusting and was about to sort two baskets of laundry when I glanced out the window. With so many leaves off the trees now, the view from the kitchen to the state park hiking trail that runs behind our back yard was unobstructed. Words floated into my head: “I cannot bear the fact that I am not walking in the woods right now.”

I thought for a moment about all the reasons someone might look out this window and say those words. Because they were too ill or injured to leave the house and reach the walking trail. Because they were taking care of someone else – someone ill, injured or simply too young to be left alone -- who needed their presence. Because there was an impending hurricane or tornado that would make woods-walking too dangerous. Because night had fallen and there was a risk of getting lost in the dark.

But none of those was the case. I was experiencing a physical yearning to be out walking in the woods, and instead I was…dusting and doing laundry. In short, nothing that really needed to be done.

And at that moment, the decision I’d made earlier in the day to focus on housework and my To Do list reversed itself. I put on boots and retrieved the dog’s leash. The dog herself needed no summoning; she was at my heels as soon as she saw the leash in my hand. We headed out.

I told myself it would be just a short walk, the easy twenty-minute loop from our yard down to the brook, across the esker and back. But once I was heading down the trail with the house behind me, dusting and laundry seemed a lot less important than they had ten minutes earlier. It was warm out, and despite last weekend’s time change, there was still plenty of light in the sky. An owl somewhere overhead hooted repeatedly. I’ve learned since moving to this house near the state park that I was wrong all my life in believing owls were solely nocturnal; we hear them throughout the day.

There was something so compelling about the urge to get out into the woods as I looked out the window to the trail. Maybe my sense of urgency had to do with the awareness that this option is temporary – we’re renters with less than a year left on our lease, and might not be able to walk through our back yard and into the state park much longer – and, of course, on the larger scale, any number of twists of fate could end my ability to go walking in the woods of Great Brook Farm State Park. Or maybe it was because I’ve been reading a lot of Thoreau lately and noticing, time and again, that Thoreau and I have in common a passion for walking equal to (in his case) or much greater than (in mine) our interest in nature itself. Thoreau had no family at home to take care of; he didn’t worry much about dusting and laundry. But he’s not here anymore to walk through the woods of New England, as far as I know (though I concede I could be wrong about that). I felt like I needed to do it for him as well as for myself.

Robert Frost said that the woods are lovely, dark and deep; my feeling yesterday was that the woods are also unconditionally welcoming. They didn’t make me feel guilty for not visiting them sooner, or for considering briefly that something else – housework – might be more important. They didn’t make demands or ask questions. They just welcomed me.

And after forty-five minutes, I was back home, free to dust and sort laundry for the rest of the afternoon, just as I’d wanted. Except I wasn’t even sure why I’d wanted that anymore, when the woods provided so much more solace than the housework.

 

Walking on the beach

On Sunday, there was ocean, sky, sunlight, clouds, beach, gulls, and hours of conversation.

My college roommate, who is still among my closest friends, lives on Moody Beach in Maine. Once or twice a year, we schedule a visit, but we always try for the same kind of visit: one during which we can walk for hours.

Both of us love long walks. Back when we were college students, we would leave from our Boston campus on spring evenings when the daylight lasted long and walk through neighborhoods of Brookline, or we’d head toward downtown and walk along the Charles River. We didn’t particularly give much thought then to whether we’d still be taking long walks together twenty-five years hence. But as it turns out, we still are.

According to my pedometer, we walked eight miles on Sunday: first from her beachside house along the shoreline to Ogunquit Center, then by roadway to the nearby village of Perkins Cove, then back to Ogunquit for a lunch on the porch of a busy café, and then back along the water’s edge to her house.

Actually, when we reached her house three hours after setting out, we still hadn’t quite had our fill of walking, so we continued to the end of the accessible beachline and then doubled back.

It’s how we catch up on each other’s lives every year. My friend has four daughters; I wanted to hear about all of them, from the one who is spending her junior year abroad in Ireland to the one in the midst of middle school. She in turn wanted to hear about my kids. And once we’d covered those topics, there was still so much more to touch upon: husbands, jobs, projects, problems, concerns, parents, vacations, and books we’d read since we last visited.

Ending a visit with her is a unique feeling. I have other friends who like to walk, of course, but few with whom I devote nearly the whole day to it, and few whom I see seldom enough that we have quite so many topics of conversation through which to wend our way. It’s exhilarating, both physically and emotionally, to cover so much territory – by foot and by word.

Saying goodbye toward the end of the afternoon, we agreed it would be good to get together over the winter if we could find the time, but we both know it’s not a critical priority. Yes, it would be fun to see each other more often, but there’s something so satisfyingly ritualistic about our tradition. The forecast for Sunday was rain, but the rain didn’t materialize. We would have walked even if it had, but instead, we were blessed with a sunny day by the water. It was wonderful, as always, and we’re all caught up for now, and I know we’ll do it again sometime within the next twelve months.  

"One Little Word" challenge: Year 3

I first learned about the "one little word" challenge in 2010. The idea, as explained here, is to find one word on which to hitch your star for the upcoming year. Or, as project founder Ali Edwards explains it, “Essentially the idea is to choose a word (or let it choose you) that has the potential to make an impact on your life…a single word to focus on over the course of the year.”

That first year, I chose the adjective “possible.” Much in my life was uncertain at that point, and there were many aspects of it that had the potential to go in either more positive or more negative directions. “Possible” seemed to be an accurate assessment while also striking an optimistic note: much is possible. Anything is possible. What you hope is possible.

In 2011, I chose the verb “succeed,” which to me was significantly different from its noun form, success. I hoped to succeed in many ways in the upcoming year. I didn’t necessarily have specific end goals that would determine whether or not my efforts had earned the title of success. I wanted to hitch my star to the concept of succeeding more than to any particular end product.

This year, I chose a very different word. It came so easily to me that I’m not sure I can explain its presence. It seemed to just organically be the word I wanted for 2012. This time, the word is a gerund: “walking.”

A somewhat odd choice, I realize. Most words people choose for the one-word challenge are more inspirational in nature: joy, serenity, gratitude, strength, balance, power, hope, fortitude. “Walking” is so quotidian by contrast, and yet in the past year I’ve come to realize how important walking is to me as a way to spend my time: I walk in the woods, I walk in my neighborhood, I walk on bike paths and city streets. I walk as a means of silent reflection; I walk while listening to podcasts or music , I walk with friends as a way of socializing. I walk the dog. I walk with the kids. On holidays at my in-laws’, I walk with my sisters-in-law. I walk fast, for exercise; or I walk slowly, to relax.

So many of my best memories from 2011 involve walking. Walking with friends on the trails in the state park behind our house. Walking on a sage-lined riverside trail in Colorado. Walking to the public beach in Portland with Tim and his friends during Tim’s birthday weekend. Walking with my college roommate on Moody Beach on a magnificent sunny September afternoon.

Beyond the literal meaning, walking seems like an appropriate guidepost word for 2012 in that it’s not a year I’m starting off with a significant number of goals or plans. A lot of things in my life are going well right now; if I could have one wish, it might be for nothing to change. Walking is a good image for how I’d like the year to progress: a calm, unhurried, mindful saunter.

Walking. It’s not an ambitious word, but it’s a fundamental and maybe even primal one. It is how most of us get through our lives, literally and symbolically. At times we run, at times we crawl, at times we stumble, at times we nearly fly; but when life is most in balance, we walk. I hope to walk a lot in the upcoming year: in the woods, on beaches, in the neighborhood, with friends. I’m starting the year with a calm, measured mindset, and this is the word that I find myself reaching for. Walking: a word that matches my current state of mind and, at the same time, reflects what I hope the upcoming year embodies.

Lunch walks

Looking all the way back to the job I began one week after college graduation, in early June of 1989, I could trace my work history by job title. Or by salary. By immediate supervisor. By office address. By length of tenure.

But yesterday it occurred to me I could also trace my work history by midday walks. I’ve always appreciated the benefits of a lunch hour spent outside in the fresh air, taking a little exercise. And each workplace setting comes with its own options for lunchtime strolls.

When I worked in Boston, I’d walk over to the Public Garden and circle the Frog Pond and the Boston Common during the noontime hour. I’d watch tourists riding the Swan Boats. I’d see well-dressed Beacon Hill aristocrats stepping along carefully, carrying their little purses and walking their little dogs. I’d see Bullfinch architecture on the skyline and Freedom Trail landmarks along the way.

When I worked in Cambridge, I walked along the Charles River, from the Esplanade down to the Mass Ave Bridge or sometimes only as far as the Hatch Shell, where the Boston Pops play on the Fourth of July. At that time I worked for a big company and a lot of my co-workers liked to go walking as well, so we’d head out together and talk about anything but what was waiting for us on our desks when we got back.

When I worked in Waltham, walking was not a popular midday activity in my company. In fact, I’m not sure I ever saw anyone venture outdoors except to get to their cars in the parking lot. We were situated in an office park on a highway exit, so the surroundings were not exactly inviting, but some of the office parks around us had relatively appealing landscaping, with lawns and manmade ponds, and I even found a cut-through to a little suburban neighborhood that backed on to one of the parking lots. It was a neighborhood nondescript enough that it could have been featured in a study about what went wrong in the design of American suburbs, and I doubt even the people who lived there went for many walks around the block. But it was better than sitting in a windowless break room.

Using the standard of lunchtime walks as a framework, though, it’s obvious to me that I’ve figuratively won the lottery at this point. I’m self-employed and get to write all day; better still, I’m at home, where my so-called office – which is actually our kitchen alcove – looks into the woods. A trail from the yard leads into the state park, with over one thousand acres of trails.

So on days like yesterday, which was an absolutely perfect New England fall day, with cool dry air, an occasional gust of wind, and yellow leaves shimmering in the sunlight, my lunchtime walk consists of grabbing the leash, calling the dog, slipping a trail map into my jacket pocket and heading out.

And once I’m in the woods, deadlines and quotes and fact-checking don’t seem to matter so much. I can enjoy the scent of the forest, the rocks and pine needles and tree roots underfoot, the rush of water from the brooks that lace through the woods. The setting is far better than any of my previous office situations, but the joy of getting out in the middle of the day is the same.

Ultimately, that’s always been the purpose of lunchtime walks: to stop thinking for a little while about the work left behind. The woods, as Robert Frost observed, are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises – and deadlines -- to keep. Still, it’s inspiring to know that as long as I keep up with my work, I can slip out to the woods again at lunchtime tomorrow.

Trail walking

I’m not sure why it took me so long to follow through on this resolution, but at last I am.

Six months ago, we moved to a house perched on the edge of a state park. Even though I’ve long known about this state park, and lived just a few miles from it for most of my life, I’ve never spent much time in it, and the few visits I did make usually didn’t go beyond the ice cream stand at the park headquarters. One truth about living in Carlisle is you seldom need to drive anywhere to find a good place for a walk, and so I almost never bothered to make the trip.

Now, though, it’s not a drive; it’s literally a walk into the woods bordering our back yard to pick up the trails network. And as soon as I realized how close we were, I was intrigued, hoping this would finally spur me on to become acquainted with Great Brook Farm State Park, far beyond the headquarters and ice cream stand section of it and deep into the dense woods beyond.

But for several months, it didn’t. Our new house is at the far end of the park, so our initial forays were only to figure out which trails led to ice cream. We did that several times over the summer, but we didn’t stray much from that path, once we’d figured it out. And when ice cream didn’t tempt us, the mosquitoes were too strong a deterrent for us to want to explore much farther afield.

Now, though, I’ve renewed my resolve. This park covers more than 1,000 acres of fields, forest, wetlands and farmland, and I want to become familiar with all of it. But I have a notoriously dismal sense of direction, so I want to learn my way gradually and thoroughly.

My first step was to take the familiar route to the park headquarters last weekend to pick up a trail map. And after that, I was well on my way. I tried following one trail on my own last weekend, another trail with my friend Donna on Columbus Day, a third option with the dog during a midweek break from writing. I found that the trail map was actually quite easy to follow, and the more I tried different routes, the more I started to gain confidence I’d never had before in my orienteering abilities. The topography began to look a little bit familiar in different places, and the compass points almost always lined up with my sense of where they should be.

Last year, I made a different resolution: to become better acquainted with the works of Thoreau. I made a little progress toward that end, but not as much as I’d hoped; and then over the summer I received as a gift a copy of The Quotable Thoreau, which is sort of like the Cliff Notes version of Thoreau’s work, perfect for literary dilettantes like me. Now, I feel like the two endeavors – reading more Thoreau and getting to know the trails of Great Brook Farm State Park – are complementary. Thoreau writes about walking in the woods, and that’s just what I’ll be doing. So I hope the two projects will fuel each other.

So far on my walks through the woods, I’ve seen ponds large and small; green, yellow, red and orange leaves; other people walking; birds; a log cabin; a Colonial-era stone foundation; and yes, lots and lots of mosquitoes. But the mosquitoes will soon be waning as colder weather arrives, and I plan to still be walking. So let’s hope this is one of my few resolutions that sticks, because there are a lot of acres of woods out my back door. And a lot of Thoreauvian passages to read. But I have time, I think. I just need to stay resolved.

The beach in September

Partly because I was so influenced by reading “The Happiness Project” by Gretchen Rubin over the summer, partly because I’d committed to do it, and partly because I couldn’t deny the likelihood that I’d have a wonderful time, I took the whole day off from work on Wednesday and drove to southern Maine to take a very long walk on the beach with my college roommate.

We’d come up with this plan in the middle of the summer: the idea was to walk from her house on Moody Beach in Wells about three miles to Ogunquit, then make our way along the Marginal Way to Perkins Cove, eat an early dinner, and do the whole thing in reverse. But the July late-afternoon we set aside for it was rainy, so we did a shorter walk instead and had dinner on her porch.

That was a fun get-together as well, but she was still intent on finding time for us to do the original plan, so I suggested we try for after the school year started.
This was a rather daring suggestion on my part. I’m usually so protective of my weekday solitude during the school year – the six hours per day that I can write without interruption – that I don’t even like to go to the post office or the supermarket during this time. So taking the whole day off was a big deal to me.
But last week, I took two hours off on a beautiful Tuesday morning to go biking, and it was blissful. As my friend Tracey said then, afterwards you’ll remember the bike ride, not the work you should have been doing. So I decided to play even more fast and loose with my work time and sneak out for the whole day.

It was a wonderful decision. When I arrived at Renee’s house, it was low tide. A bright late-summer sun glowed off a seemingly endless expanse of packed wet sand. Scattered along the miles we covered were sunbathers, other walkers, and even a few swimmers, far more people than I expected to see midweek in September. But their presence was validating. If they could enjoy the beach on such a magnificent Wednesday, even one when I should have been working, then so could I.

By the end of the afternoon, my leg muscles ached from power-walking on the sand, but it was so worthwhile. Yes, maybe I should have been working; but instead I was enjoying a gorgeous sunny day by the sea. Ultimately, which is really more important: racking up a few more billable hours or honoring the bounty of the universe?

In “The Happiness Project,” Gretchen Rubin makes the point that living a good life means identifying what makes us happy and then pursuing it. After finishing her book last month, I took her words to heart. Having interesting employment and holding onto it is important, but so is finding things that make us happy. The long invigorating walk on the beach, and the visit with an old friend, nourished my spirit tremendously.

For today, it’s back to work; I returned home to 42 unread emails, two new assignments and numerous requests for revisions on various pieces. But I also returned home with tomatoes and corn from a seaside vegetable stand, lungs full of fresh ocean air, and a very minor sunburn, all of which will remind me of what a wonderful sunsplashed day I spent by the water.

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.

Energized by a good long run

One thing I love about running is how the longer a route I run on any given day, the more energized I feel afterwards. This is not my experience with biking, though I imagine it is indeed the case for more experienced or simply more skilled bicyclists than I am. When I bike more than ten miles or so, all I feel when it’s over is relieved to get off the bike and in no rush to climb back on. After a good run, on the other hand, what I most feel like doing is taking a long walk.

Occasionally, I do have the chance for a walk after a run. One day last winter, as I was returning from my run, I passed my mother just heading out for a walk. I’d covered enough mileage, so I stopped running and turned around to walk with her for twenty minutes or so. When she and I were approaching my house on the return, I spotted my son Tim heading out for his run, so I turned around again and jogged his daily mile with him. By the time that workout was done, I was okay about stopping. But for the most part, it almost always feels good to extend the workout.

Not long ago, Tim asked me what the hardest workout I ever did was. I told him about a memorable day when we were in rural Wyoming for a family wedding. I ran five miles alongside a quiet highway. The run itself was notable because the landscape was so vast that this was the only running route I’ve ever tackled on which I could see a tree as I started running that I estimated was about two and a half miles away, and sure enough, twenty-five minutes later, I reached that same tree and turned around.

It was a long run in the hot sun, and I would have been happy to relax when that one was over, but when I arrived back at the motel where almost all of the wedding guests were staying, I found that a contingency was just heading out for a hike in a nearby wilderness area. I could have used a rest, but I didn’t want to miss out on the hike, so I grabbed a sweatshirt and jumped into the car for the short drive to the trailhead. The hike itself wasn’t so hard – the trail ran alongside a creek and involved very little climb – but I did it with an 11-month-old Tim strapped to my back in a backpack. And not only that but halfway through the two-hour hike he fell asleep leaning straight back, making him seem twice as heavy as when he was sitting upright.

It was a memorable hike both for the scenery and for the physical duress. Oh, and also because Tim was wearing tiny canvas Red Sox logo sneakers and one of them fell off his little foot somewhere on that trail in Wyoming, a fact I didn’t notice until we arrived back at the car. I like to think that somewhere in the foothills of Sunlight Basin, a grizzly cub is playing with a size 12-month Red Sox sneaker.

Most of the time, though, I can’t follow a run with a hike or even a walk; I have to get on to the next activity: deskwork or errands or cooking. But that’s okay; it’s enough just to have that feeling, that wonderful post-run sense of “I could walk for miles now.” It makes me feel light and agile even though I am neither. It’s why I like running so much.

Last Saturday, I ran on the Minuteman Bikeway. When my five miles were over, I had that feeling again, that I could turn around and do the same thing at a walking pace. But I needed to go grocery shopping, so instead, I drank some water and climbed into the car. Next to me, a group of bicyclists was just finishing up their workout. They probably felt just as good as I did, but what I noticed instead was all the lifting and maneuvering they were doing to load their bikes onto racks. Running feels simple to me: low-maintenance, light, easy. No heavy lifting when it’s over. No lifting at all when it’s over. Just me, done with my workout and more energized than when I began.

Retrospective on the weekend retreat

The annual retreat weekend from which I just returned was wonderful as always, and looking back twenty-four hours after leaving the retreat house in northeast Connecticut (the “Quiet Corner,” as I’ve learned this region is nicknamed), I’m still mulling over how much information and stimulation my brain tried to process in the two days we spent there.

I had hours for reading and writing, which is the most valuable gift I could ask for these days. I finished the novel Cost by Roxana Robinson, an account of heroin addiction which was eye-opening, heartbreaking and thoroughly engrossing. I started Between Here and April by Deborah Copaken Kogan and got just far enough into it to want to keep reading. I browsed through a book that arrived by mail order just the day before we left, The Runner’s Book of Daily Inspiration by Kevin Nelson.

I wrote even more than I read: 6,400 words in all. Most of it was self-reflective journaling, though a few items were more topically oriented and may develop into future blog entries. In having so many hours for journaling, rather than my usual daily 20 minutes of Morning Pages, I uncovered so many ideas I didn’t even know I had. For example, I homed in on the fact that unlike several years leading up to now, I do now feel that I have sufficient time in my life for writing, work, sleep and exercise; what I really want is more recreation with my kids. Because they are both so independent when they’re home and find so many ways to keep busy on their own – Tim by reading or playing computer games; Holly by inviting friends over, doing art projects or playing endless games of imaginary house or school – it’s easy for each of us to go off in our own direction when we’re all home. And in some ways, this is good; after years of caring for small children who needed near-constant attention, it still feels like a luxury to me to have my whole family at home and still be able to write or fold laundry without anyone demanding at least half my attention. But in the writing I did this weekend, I admitted the pendulum has swung the other way; I’d like to be doing more things together. Walks, hikes, bike rides, cultural events, board games. So I am resolved to try harder to draw the kids back into group activities that include me.

I spent far more time exercising outdoors than I do in a normal weekend at home. I ran five miles on Saturday and four on Sunday, and took an hour-long powerwalk on Saturday afternoon. I ended the day with the aching leg muscles that come from the kind of intensity I don’t normally experience anymore.

Though the greatest draw of the retreat weekend for me is always solitude, it’s also a good opportunity to visit with other people, and I had plenty of time over meals and other gathering times to catch up with long-time friends and meet new ones. The most significant impression the visits with old friends left me with is how much can change in a year. It’s been exactly 52 weeks since the last retreat, and that was when I last saw several of the women who were there. One, who was widowed three and a half years ago, has a new boyfriend. Another left her partner and says she is now much happier than she imagined she would be, enjoying old friends and a household to herself. One woman told me about her daughter’s joyful first semester at college; another described her son’s struggles with the intensity and sometimes eclectic constraints of his first few months at West Point. A grandmother with a granddaughter Holly’s age told me how her daughter handles 7-year-old tantrums. A new acquaintance told me about her husband’s hobby flying lightweight airplanes, something I’d never heard of before, and another new acquaintance told me about attending veterinary school in the West Indies.

In past years, I’ve returned home from these weekends to a minor dose of domestic chaos: messy household, needy children, those things popularly called fires to put out. This year it wasn’t like that. I came home midafternoon to a sparkling clean kitchen and the laundry I’d sorted on Friday all put away in drawers. Holly was playing with a friend; Tim was reading a book he’d picked up the day before. The kids told me about going out for dinner and an excursion to the local bookstore. Coming home to a peaceful household only enhanced the sense of peace that had developed during the retreat, and while I’m happy to be back, I’m also happy to have learned, heard, contemplated and discussed so much in the space of 48 hours.

Walk this way (or that way, or any way at all)

Yesterday, my mother and I took a 30-minute walk in the late afternoon. On Sunday after lunch, a friend and I took our daughters for a walk in the woods. On Saturday morning, I walked with my dog to the post office.

I absolutely love walking. Even though I ride my stationary bike for 45 minutes every morning and run at least two miles every day, I’ll take any chance I can get for a good stroll. Not for the exercise – unlike biking or running, when I’m walking I don’t worry about target heart rate. I don’t even particularly worry about continuity: I’m fine with stopping along the way to talk with a neighbor, inspect an unusual leaf that falls in my path or watch a deer cross a meadow, all of which are frequent occurrences while I’m out walking. If I’m alone, my mind wanders; if I’m walking with someone else, which is equally enjoyable, so does the conversation. It’s different for me from running. When I’m running, although the scenery and climate nearly always register, my primary focus is on the physical aspects of what I’m doing: my own footfalls and heartbeat.

When our town constructed footpaths a couple of years ago alongside the major roads, some residents were skeptical, claiming it wasn’t the lack of safe access that prevented more people from strolling around town; it was that people were busy doing other things. Those who want to walk, these skeptics claimed, take advantage of the miles of conservation trails that run through our town’s fields and forests.

I’m not sure if they’ve noticed what I have, but it seems to me that having footpaths in our town has not only changed people’s recreational practices but has in some ways changed the social fabric of the town. I run into neighbors, acquaintances and strangers all the time now when I’m out walking. The footpaths aren’t all that long; my suspicion is that people who wouldn’t bother with what they see as a real hike on one of the conservation trails still enjoy parking their car at the library and strolling a mile down Bedford Road and back. The footpaths cover some beautiful scenery in just a short distance, winding amidst stone walls, past ancient trees, near centuries-old houses and farms, through the quaint Town Center.

When I lived in the city I walked a lot too, although then it was out of necessity as well as preference; I didn’t have a car. I wasn’t surprised to see on the news this morning that Boston was just ranked second-highest for safe pedestrian access in a survey of 52 metropolitan areas nationwide done by the Transportation for America lobby group. Boston has sidewalks everywhere, usually fairly well-maintained, and a fabulous biking/walking path alongside the Charles River.

Derrick Z. Jackson writes in his Boston Globe column today about being in suburban Tampa and having to drive somewhere just to be able to take a walk safely. Even though the walking trail, when he finally reached it, was inviting, he disliked having to drive to it, and I understand that. Non-pedestrian-friendly regions go beyond feeling physically unsafe for walkers; they seem to convey a certain hostility, or at least coldness, as if walking, and its attendant meditative and/or social aspects, simply aren’t a priority there. (Or, as Jackson illustriously writes, “It is as if planners [in Tampa] viewed walking as a communicable disease and jogging as cancer.”)

During the two years that I was working in another suburb about a half-hour from here, I would go out at lunchtime and walk in a neighborhood not far from the office park where my company was located. It wasn’t a very attractive neighborhood – split-level homes on small lots – and it didn’t have sidewalks, but it also didn’t have much traffic. I found it uninspiring, but I was relieved just to get out of the office and walk.

Even though losing that job was nothing to celebrate, I can’t help feeling that my current situation – being self-employed and working from home – is in many ways far more congruent with my values, one of which is being able to take advantage of my natural surroundings. I feel so lucky that I can go running midmorning, walking with my mom in the afternoon, off for a short hike with the kids when they get home from school. (Holly was so enthusiastic about Sunday’s hike to Castle Rock that she insists she wants to do it soon again, although by yesterday the urge seemed to have already faded.)

On Twitter this morning I saw this quote from Lao Tzu: “If you want to stop being confused, join your body, mind, and spirit in all you do.” When I walk, that’s how I feel: that my body, mind and spirit have intertwined, at least for the duration of the walk. Making that happen in “all I do” might be a bit more of a challenge, but that’s a start.

My hiking wish came true

It’s true that I’ve been a big believer in the “Write it down, make it happen” principle ever since reading the book by the same name by Henriette Anne Klauser. But I didn’t really believe that getting my kids out in the woods this weekend would be that easy, or that the same technique I apply to tasks such as filing my community briefs for the paper or sewing a Girl Scout badge on Holly’s smock would work for implementing a new attitude in them.

But somehow it did. Last week I blogged about how important it was to me to do some kind of woods walking with both kids this weekend, no matter how easy, no matter how brief, no matter how close to home. Just to make it happen.

And it did happen! They didn’t read my blog entry; their only way of knowing how important it was to me was hearing me say at dinner on Thursday, “This is something I really really want to do.” But either I talk a good game and made them want to do it too – let’s not forget that for eight years, my full-time job was to write copy that would compel people to spend thousands of dollars on overseas vacations – or else they intuited how much it mattered to me. On Saturday I reminded them in the morning, “After lunch we’re going walking around Walden Pond,” and after lunch I said “We can leave just as soon as I brush my teeth,” and both were ready to go. No demurring, no conversation about why they did or didn’t want to do it. They just showed up at the appointed time and place, and that in itself amazed me.

The three of us plus the dog drove twenty minutes to Walden Pond, but when we arrived, the parking lot attendant told us that dogs are not allowed at the pond, at least not this weekend. (Or am I forgetting that Thoreau actually said “I went to the woods because I wanted to live caninelessly”?) I felt momentarily sorry for Belle but shrugged it off quickly; more important to get our walk in than to worry about her needs, so I said to the attendant, “Oh well, she can just stay in the car then.” But he explained dogs aren’t even allowed in cars at Walden Pond, a detail that mystified the kids and generated several more minutes of discussion as I turned the car around. “Why does it matter to the park rangers if your dog pees in your car?” they wondered. It’s a fair question, but happily for us, the parking lot attendant had a suggestion for a place we could walk with the dog just five minutes away, so we headed onward to Brister Hill.

And again, what amused me was just the no-questions-asked aspect of it on the kids’ part. I realize there’s nothing so complicated about walking on a trail in the woods, even if you haven’t done it much before, but they just piled out of the car and hit the trail without asking me where we were headed or how long we’d be out or anything. And even though I’m happy to walk for hours in the woods, especially on what was a sunny, mild fall day with the foliage shimmering beautifully, I didn’t mind at all if we didn’t get far. It was about getting out, not getting far.

We hadn’t traveled more than twenty feet from the parking lot, dog on leash, when the kids found the first item of fascination (well, the second, given that the first was really Walden Pond’s policy about dogs in cars): in a shallow marshy spot lay a log that rocked slightly back and forth when they stood on it. Shrieking with glee, they stood together on the log, seeing how long they could rock before one of them lost balance. That took up the first ten minutes of the walk; then we headed farther into the woods, where we found a trail that circled a pond, and started making our way around it.

In all, we were in the woods for an hour. At the end of the hour I felt like neither the dog nor I had gotten any exercise to speak of because the kids’ hiking style is so strange. Rather than proceeding along the path, they divert constantly: first to find walking sticks for themselves, then to test the water temperature in the pond, then to walk the length of a fallen tree, using it like a balance beam. Part of the trail ran alongside a very steep esker: while Belle and I waited below, the two of them scampered up the esker and slid down half a dozen times or so, then found another fallen tree to use like a balance beam, then up a different steep hillside to see how far they could walk parallel to the trail, keeping sight of me from high above. I don’t know that we covered so much as a mile of linear terrain, but it didn’t matter because they were so happy: Tim because of all the adventuresome things he was finding to do and Holly because Tim was pulling her along with him on all the feats to be attempted.

And I was happy that we were out walking in the woods, just like I’d hoped for. I was happy that my Columbus Day wish came true.