Musings on Foot

Warren and I were out late last night watching "American Graffiti" at the Wexner Center. We had time before the movie to walk around the Ohio State campus, which is where Warren did all of his undergraduate education and where I put in one spring quarter myself. My lone quarter coincided with his final quarter and on that vast campus of tens of thousands of students, we actually ran into each other as I was going down and he was coming up the stairs to a basement bookstore.

It was the first time we had seen each other in over two years.

The look in Warren's eyes when he saw me can only be described as "stunned." As in "what are you doing here?" I gave a greeting, he may have responded, and we both kept going our separate ways. When I got to the bottom of the stairs, I turned around and ran back up the steps after him, but he had already blended into the mass of students outside and I could not find him.

Last night as we walked to Mirror Lake and then back across the main quad, we both mused a little on what could have happened if I had caught up with him that long ago spring day and said what was on my mind, which was "I miss you."

See the sort of thoughts that walking can trigger?

I had a string of errands to run this morning. The stops I needed to make were all within a few blocks of one another, all clustered in or around our core downtown, which is about five blocks from this house.

I try to walk as much as possible when I need to go downtown. I can tick off a myriad of reasons for walking: it's good for me, I prefer to keep the car parked for short trips, it allows me time to turn over my thoughts, it's fun to see the changes in gardens through the seasons, and, most important of all, I like walking. Especially in Delaware.

Today I found myself idly jiggling the keys in my hand before leaving. Walk or drive? Walk or drive? I was tired (from the late night last night) and I had to measure which energy it was more precious to conserve: the gasoline in my car or the physical reserves in my body?

In the end, walking won out.

I'm glad it did. It is a classic Midwest summer day. Front yard gardens are full of blooms, from stubby marigolds to nodding coneflowers. There was an elderly woman who looked up from her seat on her front porch and exclaimed "I got my mail early today!" So did I and she beamed when I shared that news with her.

When I walk, my mind runs down all sorts of crooked paths. What is nipping off my zucchini blossoms? Squirrels, I'd say, looking at the neatness of the nip line. Do I plant coneflowers and Black-Eyed Susans next year to encourage pollinators? Maybe. I may be pollinating the pumpkins by hand this year given the lack of bees. Maybe I should order garlic sets from Seed Savers Exchange, but maybe it is better to put it off until next summer. Was Richard Dreyfus ever again so vulnerable as he was in last night's film? When will the tomatoes start to ripen?

I think about the household chores, about community projects, and about whether there is dessert tonight. Sometimes there is a quite a din in my head as I walk.

When I walk, the world comes closer. The slower pace and the pedestrian's eye view ensure that. On foot, I can look over a low fence to see the Big Wheel tipped sideways on the lawn where a child jumped off before heading to bed last night. On foot, I can watch the pinwheel planted by a front step turn in the breeze. On foot, I can share a stranger's delight in her early mail delivery. On foot, I can plan dinner, write a note to a colleague, think through a tangled project, and wave to a friend driving by.

On our refrigerator is a quote by Gandhi: There is more to life than increasing its speed. I try to keep that thought in the forefront on a daily basis. I am not always successful - life moves speedily regardless of my wishes and plans. Some days are car days no matter what my intentions are and some days fly by so fast that I get to day's end and wonder what hit me.

I know I cannot hold back time, no matter how sweet the moment. There are times that lesson is bittersweet to the point of tears. But I also know that walking allows me to slow time down and stretch it out just a little longer to enjoy the flowers, to exchange the greeting, and, 33 years after that chance meeting on a stairway, to savor a cross campus stroll with the man I love.