Along for a Walk

I went for a walk today.

Just a little one, only three kilometers. I used to walk almost that far, one way, to school, once. And yes, I checked the distance with Google Maps. I meant to take the bus to the dentist; I walked to the store to get tickets,  then realized I was already halfway. What the hell, the weather was gorgeous, virtually perfect. The sunsear was tempered by fast-moving fair-weather clouds, the temperature was bang on 20, winds were light: an ideal day for a walk.

I was all alone. I didn't see a single other person on foot over the nearly 40 minute stroll. I passed quite close to one playground and within sight of another: they were both deserted. Car after car after car zoomed by, and a couple of cyclists nearly clipped me on the sidewalk (once again, it's not called a "sideride", you dumbasses!)....but nobody, but nobody was on shank's mare.

Walking is even better than cycling for seeing the world as it is. You can actually smell the flowers without stopping: as I always do, I admired a flowery bower of a front yard a block from my house, on which there isn't a single weed or purposeless blade of grass. Lovely fragrances battled for nasal superiority...and then, as I always do, I thought about the sheer amount of backbreaking labour it must take to maintain that yard, and moved along. Yes, anything worth doing takes effort. Some things, like lawns, take twice as much effort: I've got to exert effort to earn the money to pay the person who puts in the effort. My "lawns", such as they are, will entail a great deal of effort and expense. Lawn: rhymes with "yawn".

There just aren't many summer days like today around here. On this date last year it was 30 degrees, probably with seventy-drip percent humidity: too hot to walk, let alone work, naked, in other words. If it's not dripping with humidity, it's dripping for real: on my last little walk, two days ago, random wind shots rendered my umbrella useless and turned me into a wet weasel.  

But today: beautiful walk. Nobody to share it with. I was most concerned walking past those playgrounds. This was far from the first time I've found them empty.  I was a sheltered, indoor kid and I played on the playground often enough, a whole lot more often than most kids today do. I suppose there aren't enough screens. I wonder if the pendulum will ever come back, if today's children will
eventually realize they should maybe exercise a little. For the sake of the human race, I sure hope so.

After the other half of my mouth was cleaned and polished, I continued with my walk, over to the mall.  I ran into a former colleague on her way to get some sushi...she and her friend were the only two people I saw on foot today. I meandered through the mall--Target actually had stock on many of its shelves!--and then decided to bus home, more for lack of company than lack of motivation to walk.

I'd like to walk through a forest. An honest-to-goodness forest, far from any city. I'd like to walk along the shore of a lake, along a riverbank, through a mountain valley, up hill and down dale, all the live-long day. I'd pack a picnic lunch  and maybe pause for a nap in the shade of a weeping willow. At that point, some bylaw officer will probably make an appearance to shoo me along as if I were a hobo. Sad world we live in, isn't it?

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