You've Got to Walk the Walk

The Boston Herald

Beth and I have been walking. Almost every day. Around her neighborhood. Around in a circle. Four loops and we're done.

I used to walk, years ago, because it was the only way I could get anywhere. I walked over to Janet Butler's and we'd walk together to church and back. I called Rosemary and said, "Meet me at the halfway place," and she would and we'd walk downtown to the movies, or to the Five-and-Ten, or to the library.

I walked with all my friends. Home from school. Around the block. To the Dairy Queen. That's what kids did. We walked and we talked. And it was good. It was great, not just the walking but the being together. I wonder, now, how I could have forgotten this.

For a lot of my adult years, I walked my dog Molly. But she's full of wee seats these days. That's how my Scottish mother-in-law would have put it. Molly's old and tires quickly. She used to tug on her leash. Now I'm the one doing the tugging, "Come on, girl. You can make it," I say. And she tries. But it's not really walking that we're doing anymore.

Beth and I began walking for exercise. She said it would be good for us, better than the gym, which was a given because belonging to a gym and working out at a gym are two separate things. I groaned at the idea of walking. It took too long, I said. I didn't have time. I didn't want to. It was too hot, too cold, too wet, dry, dark, sunny - too everything.

At first we did it this way: We would leave our houses at the same time, walk to a meeting point, then walk together for a while. The together part was OK. Together we talked and the time went by. Alone every step felt like 10.

So we decided to eliminate the alone part and drive to one another's house and begin and end our walk together. And so it began.

It wasn't always easy, getting motivated, getting going and keeping going. It still isn't. We're not 13 and there are days when the idea of going out in the cold, of putting on boots and mittens and walking around in a circle is the last thing we feel like doing. But we do it.

Some days it takes us a while to warm up and to hit our stride. And there are days when we never hit our stride. But most times we start off talking about how crazy this is, walking when we could be sitting and how this better be good for us, this better be strengthening our bones. And then suddenly we're not complaining anymore, we're talking about something else - fathers, grandmothers, husbands, kids, the state of the world, first loves, dogs, babies, homework, the way the sky looks at dusk, the color of a door, the fret of the trees, and then, what do you know? The walk is over and it hasn't been horrible at all. 

Anne, my friend from Lancaster, N.H., who has been walking with three friends for years, tried to tell me this."I don't get it. Why do you walk?" I used to ask her. "How can you actually like walking?”

Now I know. 

It isn't just the walking. It's being outdoors. It's the sun on your back, sometimes, and the wind in your face, too often, and the taste of rain now and then. It's what all our mothers meant when they said, "Go on outside and get some fresh air.”

It is also an escape. Beth and I walk and we talk. And the talk isn't like adult conversation. It doesn't have a purpose. It seldom even has a beginning, a middle and an end. It meanders the way we do. It goes around in circles never seeming to go anywhere.

And yet it goes everywhere. That's the freedom that walking brings. Past. Present. Future. It's all up for grabs. It's like the Wheel of Fortune. You never know where it will stop. It's pieces of life shared, stories told, problems solved.

And with every "What time do you want to walk tomorrow?" it's like being a kid again.