Carrying the Weight Walk

I’m planning a walk before the summer ends—not a very long walk, just a few days, but long enough that I need to do something to get ready, since a six weeks or more of sitting and writing has done less than nothing to help me prepare. So this morning I left the house carrying a full pack to see how far I could go. 

Christine and I walked together as far as our allotment garden. We passed a young woman painting a mural on a fence. We told her about the mural on our garage; she has seen it. Down the alley, I noticed a large planting of junipers with delphiniums and ferns breaking through, along with the inevitable sow thistles. An invasion or life doing what it does, or both? Christine wanted to show me a new way of walking to the allotment, and we passed a front yard vegetable garden, neatly planted in wooden raised beds. How much better is that compared to a lawn? 

We cut through a park that runs beside the stormwater drainage channel and arrived at the allotment. Our corn is high, although there are no flowers yet, and the squash is doing well. The pole beans, which are supposed to climb up the corn, are mostly missing in action. Maybe that’s just as well, because the last time I tried the three-sisters technique, the beans pulled the corn plants over. It’s all about balance. While Christine started watering the plot, I pulled sow thistle out of the potatoes. That stuff is everywhere.

I left Christine to her watering—she finds it meditative—and carried on walking south. I passed a stand of trembling aspen—my favourite tree, I think—that I’d never noticed before, and cut through a parking lot. The ditches beside Pasqua Street are wet, and I noticed a discarded blue surgical mask on a lawn. It was a hot day, and the farther I walked, the heavier my packed seemed to get. Soon I was breathing heavily, happy to stop to take notes because it gave me a chance to rest. I should be starting getting ready for this walk more gradually, I told myself, slowly developing strength and fitness, but there’s no time for that; the summer will be over before I know it.  A hot wind was blowing from the south. No birds were singing. I only heard the sounds of traffic and the humming of air conditioners. I was wondering where the birds had gone when I startled a half dozen grey partridges that had been resting in somebody’s shady front yard. They flew up into the air squawking, their wings creaking. A crow laughed behind me.

A broken streetlight was lying on the sidewalk. I saw graffiti on a wooden fence, but when I turned to look, it was only a pattern of knots in the pine boards. Asters—a native plant—graced a plot of sow thistles and quack grass beside a driveway. A muscle car grumbled and snorted. A license plate from a motorcycle was leaning against a stoplight; it hinted at a story without disclosing the plot. I pressed the begging button at Lewvan Drive and waited to cross. The walk signal there is short; I had barely taken three steps into the intersection before it started flashing red. The city’s roads department doesn’t care for pedestrians, it seems, or else it doesn’t think about them. 

I walked into the Grasslands retail development and ate lunch. Afterwards, when I left the air-conditioned dining room—restaurants are now allowed to let customers eat inside, as long as only half of the tables are available for use—it felt hotter than before, and my pack even heavier. I turned east. Irrigation spigots on the boulevard were spraying the road and the crosswalk’s begging button. An abandoned Walmart shopping cart rested next to a bench and a garbage can. I crossed Lewvan Drive again and noticed a crow roosting at the top of a poplar tree. Across the street, dead trees reminded me that this city was originally a grassland and not a forest. An orange Shelby Mustang from the 1960s was parked under a shady tree, and I thought about Steve McQueen and Bullitt. Wrong colour, and the wrong car, too, if you want to get picky, but it’s the kind of car he would’ve driven. Sidewalk trash advertised its organic credentials. A fake wishing well hosted colourful petunias. City crews were noisily cutting grass on a boulevard.

After just ten kilometres, the heat and the weight convinced me to call it a day. I walked to a Starbuck’s, bought an iced coffee, and called home for a ride. I sat outside. People around me were talking about the pandemic and how it had affected their plans for September. That’s only a month away. I have to get ready for fall. More importantly, I have to get ready for my walk. I can’t rush this after all, I realized. I’m going to have to take some time and get ready slowly.