Winter Walking

Winter Walking

I may have told you that I walk to my coffee klatch most mornings despite whatever the weatherman throws my way. This morning walk follows my lifetime habit of walking whenever circumstances afforded me the opportunity to enjoy the outdoors and I had the time for a leisurely stroll. During my working days, I often used a portion of my lunch hour to leave the office and walk around the neighborhood of wherever place I happened to be. In the summer months, wife Marjorie and I frequently walked together in the evening around the neighborhoods of our Clarkston, Michigan hometown just for the pleasure of a brief respite from the cares of everyday life.

After our three sons began to participate in Boy Scouts, their activities provoked Marjorie and I to begin longer hiking trips into the back woods. For several years, we devoted some of our precious vacation time to backpacking trips, walking through the woods with our camping gear, food and water carefully ensconced in bottles and bags on our backs. It was on one of those backpack trips that I discovered that some walks are harder than others. One section of a hike on the Pictured Rocks hiking trail passed over a sandy beach. The beach sand seemed to suck in each footfall, making every step a challenge to stay erect and balanced given the backpack and its burden during the warm weather.

We haven’t walked the backpack trails in some while as the rigors of the practice and the resultant soreness now seem more severe than the pleasures derived. Since my retirement, however; I have continued walking for exercise and pleasure, finding solace in the woods and rural character of our current neighborhood. Besides that, I consider it my duty to keep an eye out for any apparent wrongdoing to fulfill my role as neighborhood curmudgeon.

So, you see I have lengthy experience in walking and sufficient chutzpah to offer this treatise about foot-based ambulatory excursions in the North Woods. The first thing I learned about walking here is that the pleasure derived is highly dependent on the season, the weather, and the conditions of the pathway that I choose to walk upon.

Mosquitoes and black flies are a substantial risk in spring time walking as the critters grow to proportions that make blood donations unnecessary in warm weather. Cold weather walking generally offers freedom from the aforementioned pests, but it also eliminates the pleasure of listening to bird songs and the calls of frogs and other vocalizing critters. The walks in summer and fall are only occasionally disrupted by neighborhood visitors who seem to think it is their duty to disrupt the peaceful character of our wooded area by ear-splitting, open-air machines that travel much too fast for a motorcycle, snowmobile, or four-wheeler, all of which are operated without seat belts or other attributes signaling a dose of common sense.

My morning walks to the coffee klatch necessarily involves walking on the paved road that serves as my pathway to the neighbor’s house. A recent February morning’s walk is instructive of one of the many walking hazards that need exposure by a curmudgeon like me. You should first understand that roads are not the exclusive domain of motorists. Most roads in our nation, especially in rural areas like mine, were planned and built long before cars existed. The traffic expected by those who planned our roads was primarily walkers and those who drove horse-pulled contrivances. Car and truck drivers were late arrivals who began using the roads only in the last century. The point of this discussion is to illustrate that walkers, bicyclists, runners, horse drivers and other road users have both preemptive and legal rights to use our roads just as much as do motorists. Now, back to my winter walk of last month.

The roadway was covered in snow, about six inches, and no more than three or four cars had passed by judging from the few tracks through the snow following the route that the drivers believed was the actual road. The temperature was in the teens and the 20 mile per hour wind added to the challenge. I thought back to the beach sand and decided that this walk was my second worst as I trudged along, trying to minimize the effect of the snow by walking in the tire tracks. I was content with the silence of the walk as the snow provided a blanket on everything and my headgear further insulated me from almost any sound. Thus it was that I didn’t hear the approaching vehicle that had also chosen the center of the road for his pathway. He was traveling way faster than me, too fast for a snow-covered road. Suddenly the sounds of his motor reached my ears and I turned to see a pick-up truck heading straight for me. I lunged to the side of the road as he whipped by me, making no apparent effort to swerve to the side, probably the correct approach as a sudden move would have likely caused a skid. It was too close for comfort. Had I had been able, I would have spoken sharply to the offending driver as befitting my role as curmudgeon, but instead the vehicle continued down the road, seemingly oblivious to the close call.

In hindsight, I realize the driver was not guilty of malfeasance. He (or she) was just going about the business of daily life, in a hurry, and guilty of nothing more than being unaware of a solitary walker making his way down a snowy road on a weekday morning. His and my life almost took a terrible turn but, in the end, continued without so much as a ruffled hat or slipped boot print.

And now on the eve of the arrival of spring, our road has mostly returned to bare pavement save for the ice in front of my house and driveway. I expect that it too will soon be gone and with it the reminder of winter and the frailty of life while walking on a snow-covered road. And yesterday, as a postmark to an eventful week, I went grocery shopping with wife Marjorie in a nearby Amish shop. As I waited near the check-out line, a little girl of three or four bobbed about while her slightly older brother wandered nearby. She must have noticed me because she soon tugged her brother around the corner to point me out. “Look at the old man!” she said, to the smiles and chuckles of several nearby shoppers. I couldn’t help myself from smiling also, although I did slink away as soon as I reasonably could.