Walk

Walk. Just walk. No talking. No thinking. Plenty of looking. Smelling. Feeling. Sensing the weather, the barometric pressure, the mood of the day.

Riley and I walk the same path, the same way, twice a day, everyday. Riley always finds what is "new" to the walk. A stick, a puddle, fresh snow, a kleenex, another dog, people with umbrellas, boys with a basketball. The same walk is always fresh for the dog. It is sometimes harder for me to let go of "my thoughts/my worries" and just exist with the walk. I try.

I sometimes wish I had an old, dirty, rundown car. A car that I could load the dog into so we could go down to the ocean to walk or into the fields to walk or out on the clam flats to walk. And it wouldn't matter if we were muddy, wet and stinky when we finished walking. We could just climb back into the car and nevermind the mess.

Buying an old, disheveled car isn't so easy. I do want it to work properly. I do want it to be sturdy enough to get an inspection tag each year. My husband was given, free, a wonderful old Volvo station wagon with an engine that would have run for 100 years. He adored that free car and gave it a new exhaust system. The undercarriage was riddled with rust though and the inspection personnel knew of this defect in Volvos of a certain age and model and would look there first. When it finally needed a new tag, it failed inspection. And G couldn't drive it anymore. It sat. He asked mechanics to fix it. They said no, it was too expensive, too timeconsuming, not worth their effort somehow. He found another, newer Volvo with a better undercarriage and a terrible engine. He wanted to swap the engines. No again. No time. Not interested. If my dad wasn't in his 80's and ill, he would have done it for us. So in the end, both cars went to a scrap yard.

I wonder why G didn't just rig up a pulley and take the cars apart himself. He could still be working on this exchange of engines. And perhaps even be close to finishing by now, 8 years or more later, and we could be taking the dog to wet, muddy places for a nice, stinky walk.

Today's painter's key letter had this comment:
We rescued a wonderful dog about seven months ago. I walk with him in the morning for about twenty minutes and in the afternoon for about an hour on a wooded trail... every day for the past six months. I actually try not to think of anything and instead enjoy the new leaves coming out, the birds, the path, the aliveness that I feel very much a part of when I stop the incessant mind. I see people running past with headphones, and cell phones, and talking nonstop to one another... Why must we always be 'doing'? I try to use the walks almost as a quieting stillness of my mind, and I find that when I return, I am always more peaceful and alert. I also sleep much better. Walking is really a meditation for me. The dog loves it too!