50/50 Exercise #25: Halfway

For several years, I’ve tormented many of my friends, confidants, and co-conspirators with long reveries about how writing is a lot like walking. Each is a habit, an exercise that is practice and performance at the same time, a Zen meditation, an everyday struggle, and a source of daily joy in tiny doses.

Today’s writing assignment is on the theme of “halfway,” which brings to mind the pattern of landmarks that tell me how far I’ve come and how far I have to go in my daily Memorial Park regimen. So I thought I’d take a break from writing about thinking and thinking about writing to take my beloved readers on a walk at the park (from the indoor comfort of my writing chair, to whatever place you like to read).

0 miles
The stretching area near where I usually park my car: adjust my socks, tighten my shoes, don my iPod. Wish I’d worn warmer clothing, or think about taking something off. I set out—clockwise. Almost always clockwise.

I take a few deep breaths. I shake off any disagreeable mood I’ve brought with me. On a cheerful day, starting my walk puts an irrepressible smile on my face.

.25 mile
Pass the place on the trail where a runner died last week. The marks left by the EMT crew are still visible. For a week, I have had the same thought—should someone leave a pot of flowers here, at least until the memory starts to fade?

A little past .5 mile
This is the spot where, in cold weather, I can feel my body’s thermostat flip a switch. Some metabolic mechanism decides that I’m not in imminent danger of freezing, so it starts routing blood to the extremities again.

Between .75 and 1.0 mile
The first water break. The fountain is city water—warm when the weather’s warm, cold when the weather’s cold—, but it’s a satisfying ritual to step off the trail and take this first of several drinks.

1.0 mile
The trail turns from the loop road onto Memorial Drive. Though the ground remains mostly level, the traffic noise and exhaust at rush hour can make this portion of the path an uphill climb. But even in the coldest weather, my fingers and toes are thoroughly warm by now.

On a rainy day, a tiny rivulet forms in the rut worn by the feet of the people who walk or run the inside track. I hop back and forth across it to navigate the patches of more solid ground. Also along this leg of the walk, there is a shrub that is unremarkable for 355 days of the year, but it bursts out in a cloud of fluffy white blossoms for a week or two in March every year. I am looking forward to it already!

1.25 miles
On the inside edge of the trail, we’re protected by a short span of chain-link fence where the path is crumbling into a gully. The water that drains from the road, the trail, and the golf course around which the path wanders can turn the gully into a raging torrent after a heavy rain.

Just before 1.5 miles
There on my right is a narrow strip of trees where you can see through to the golf course. It was here late one icy-cold night recently that I imagined what it would be like for someone to come walking through the trees toward me, and my alien abduction story got its start.

1.5 miles
Halfway. A little past half, actually, because the trail extends slightly less than three miles. Or not quite half, since we’re talking about my own routine. The spot is marked by another water fountain, a concrete paver that says “1.5 miles,” and a crosswalk that leads to the park facilities on the other side of Memorial. After wandering in and out of the trees up to this point, the trail now becomes heavily shaded. The thicker trees here provide relief from wind or sun, depending on the season.

Almost 2 miles
I turn the corner off Memorial and back to the loop road—greater relief even than the halfway mark. I can turn down the volume on my iPod. I always find myself slowing down a little now that I’m leaving behind the sense of urgency that I draw from the rushing traffic.

2.25 or so miles
The third water fountain is in a lovely spot behind an informal cluster of shrubs, perennial flowers, and small trees. Someone has donated an elegant wooden bench for this rest stop. There is a fruit tree—an apple or pear, I think—that bears gorgeous, tiny, fruity-fragrant pink flowers in the spring. In winter, its bare, gnarled branches look wet and almost black.

Nearing 2.5 miles
There is a bench where I see the same overweight middle-aged man more times than seems statistically probable…unless he sits there for several hours nearly every day. His pickup truck is parked on the roadway nearby. Every time I see him, I wonder if he comes here to exercise, or if he just likes the view from this spot.

2.5 miles
My friend Joe comes walking with me from time to time. Although he’s shorter than I, he has no trouble keeping up. This mile marker is the point after which I give him permission to ask, “Are we there yet?” and to raise the topic of where we will dine after our walk.

Nearing 2.75 miles
The Parks Department planted a stand of pine saplings a year or so ago in a clearing between the running trail and the golf course. Until recently, they hadn’t trimmed the grass and weeds growing among the knee-high, bright-green pines, so this area looked like a little patch of wilderness between the well-worn path and the manicured green.

Also here: The spot where a huge old pine tree used to stand. It was struck by lightning the summer before last. The jolt tore off the bark in a spiraling strip from the ground all the way up as far as one could see into the upper branches. I hoped that it would survive the event with no more than an ugly scar. But the tree died from the damage, and the park staff cut it down and ground out the stump, which would otherwise have remained a hazard in the middle of the trail. I walk over the spot where it stood and think about the tree.

After 2.75 miles
Back to “civilization,” as the woods and golf course give way to a croquet court, tennis courts, the tennis center, and lots of parking. Almost done. In this stretch, the foot traffic is always at its most dense, so one has to be more vigilant to avoid collisions.

2.9 miles
I am back to where I started, but just as halfway wasn’t quite halfway, finished isn’t quite finished. I always walk a little farther, past my imaginary trailside shrine, down to the driveway that leads to the golf center.

Here, I turn around and slow my pace. I listen to my body. I feel the satisfying warmth of my muscles, a few insignificant aches and pains.

I think about how far I have walked. I think about how short the distance seems in relation to how it felt when I started. I don’t think very often about all the times I’ve done it before. I hope I will be able to do it again every day for a very, very, very long time.