Pandemic
Walking
by
Steve Bailey
I was temporarily
disabled by double heart bypass surgery during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The usual physical recovery facilities were not available, so I
self-rehabilitated while I self-quarantined.
When I was running,
it was a sport. My mind was on time, distance, and endurance. After each run, I
would check the stopwatch on my wrist. Was I faster than the last time I ran
the same length? I ran to train for races that I joined to push myself to run. In
those races, it was all about getting a personal best. In preparation, I ran up
the steepest hills in our neighborhood, trying to get to the top in less time
than the time before. It was during one such challenge that I experienced chest
pain resulting in surgical intervention.
Walking is not about
performance. I set a pace, off I go, and the only reason to check a timepiece
is to see if I'm late for dinner. It is about flushing out the detritus of data
collected in the brain cells, most unwelcome to begin with, and replacing it
with clean, fresh ideas. It is about observation and creative thinking.
Once while walking
down a street I had not been on in a long time, I noticed a deflated Halloween
lawn decoration, a collapsed ghost, lying on neglected grass. Other lawns had
collapsed Santa Clauses, but the ghost, for some reason, had not been replaced.
So my mind began to imagine this ghost, filled with helium becoming alive and
floating over the neighborhood, imposing itself on its Christmas counterparts. In
my imagination, he pretends to be the Holy Ghost hovering over a nativity scene
and scaring the bejesus out of the Baby Jesus. By the time the walk was over, I
had an idea for a story.
Not all walking
thoughts are as puerile as a gas-filled ghost scaring a future deity. The German
philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was a devoted walker, sometimes spending his
whole day hiking around. Two quotes from his book Twilight of the Idols epitomize
his view on walking
"Only ideas
won by walking have any value."
"All truly
great thoughts are conceived while walking."
Jean-Jacques
Rousseau, the political philosopher of the Age of Enlightenment, wrote in his
book Confessions,
"I can only
meditate when I am walking. When I stop, I cease to think; my mind works only
with my legs."
Perhaps if we all keep walking, our thinking
will be more philosophical and less pedestrian.
COVID-19 has made
more of us in the neighborhood walkers. Gyms are high risk, and some are still
closed. Those self-quarantining take breaks from their computers, television
sets, or books and go out for a stroll. Those working from home take their
office outside, getting work done on their phone or tablet as they amble
through our wooded community. They and the gossipers who gabfest on their cell
phones while walking remind me of Mark Twain's quote about golf, "…a good
walk spoiled."
We have hand-holding
walkers, couples usually elderly, holding each other's hands as they walk
either as an expression of love or an affectation for the rest of us to see. There
are strollers pushing strollers, young moms, au pairs, and dutiful grandmothers.
The dog walkers have
always been part of the neighborhood's scenery, but I see more of them now.
Either the dogs are getting out more often, or walking is making me more
perceptive. Some power walk, strenuously
pushing themselves as the dog ambles along at their side. Others are ramblers
who stop to let the dog sniff anything it wants.
There is a sense
of community as we walk past each other and give a brief greeting. There are
times, dark and cloudy days when we all serendipitously come out of our homes
at the same time and start our walks that we look like characters in a science
fiction movie, moving, at a distance from each other up and down streets under
the control of aliens.
Maybe I'll start
running when the rest of the neighborhood returns to its old routine. When the
self-quarantined are back in their offices and gyms, their children in schools
and daycare, and the gossip gabbers are in each other's kitchens telling their
tall tales over coffee instead of shouting them through cell phones. Until then,
I will stroll around the neighborhood and see what pops into my head.