a love letter to taking a walk
Dear taking a walk,
Some days, this is the only desire I have: to take a walk. I walk out my front door, through the ranch gate, and turn right past the house with the toy dump trucks and bikes in the yard. Sometimes I pick up a whiffle ball and toss it back over the fence where the kids can bat it back out into the street again. I head down the hill lined by Agarita bushes – yellow flowered and fragrant now - and pass the house where I’ve been warned not to stop to talk, but once a man came out to offer me an umbrella when the rain caught me unaware.
After this cluttered yard, the road gets more shaded as I pass under huge, old oaks and by a meticulously cared for property on the right. Here, a ‘Make America Great Again’ banner hangs from a railing painted with stars and stripes, and Fox news flashes through the front window. A few days ago, the owner hopped off his mower to ask if I was the one who also ran and rode my bike by their place. “Yes, that’s me,” I admitted, and he pulled out his phone to show me of a photo of him crossing a finish line in a high school track race 50 years ago. Common ground.
From there, I skirt around the cattle guard and tread the worn cement low-water crossing. Often there is a blue heron fishing in this creek. Once I had a two blue heron day. On the other side of the water, I walk up, up, up, past the place where I once gave a turtle a boost over the lip of the embankment, after watching her take one tiny step forward and two sliding steps back. Now the road curves upward past cedars and a few ranch houses, one with a weathered boot on the gate. Just past an ancient windmill, the iconic Texas scene, I turn around at the dead end. One mile.
When my dog comes along, my walk seems to have greater purpose. What a funny concept, that a walk should feel purposeful. I imagine this is a western-culture, productivity-based notion. I suppose it used to be mine. Lately, I am content walking just to walk: sun, clouds, freezing, humid, windy, whatever. Yesterday I stopped to take in a tiny purple flower in the short grass - the first this year.