Walking on a Hot Summer Morning

I left the house earlier than I did on Tuesday, but still not early enough to beat the heat. I should’ve set the alarm and left before seven o’clock, but I didn’t, and I dithered at my computer while the sun got higher in the sky. Eventually I tied my boots and started walking. I walked down the alley beside our house and out onto the street behind. Patterns of light and shade dappled the sidewalk underneath the street elms. I noticed a garden of native plants—Canada wild rye, pink onion, sage, fleabane, asters, wild columbine—next to green peppers and rhubarb. Down the street, a line of sunflowers, tall and thin, stood against someone’s front porch. The elm trees made me think of Ariel Gordon’s book, Treed, where she describes the thousands of elm trees Winnipeg loses to Dutch elm disease every year—so many that the infected trees sometimes stand for months, marked by an orange splash of paint, waiting to be removed. This city loses a handful of elms each year, and the dying trees are quickly taken down. Because I was thinking about elms, I took a few photographs of their crowns against the sky.

Across the street, a gardener was weeding something she had planted in a wire cage, probably to keep the jackrabbits from eating it. The sound of a fountain in a front yard was cool and inviting. A squirrel scrambled up a tree. I put on some sunscreen, leaving my hands greasy. I have to be careful; I’m at the age where I can see where my skin has been damaged by too much sun, and the patches of actinic keratosis on my face—precancerous lesions—remind me that I have been careless in the past. They also remind me that it’s time to make an appointment to get them removed, before they become something nasty. At the corner of 19th Avenue, I ran into Chris, a graduate student in the Department of English who is working for the government while he finishes his degree. We talked about the university’s response to the pandemic and the nonfunctional beg button at the crosswalk on Albert Street. “I’ve waited five minutes for the light to change,” he said. “I don’t think the button is connected to anything.” Chris was headed to work; his job involves a lot of paper files and it’s difficult to do from home. We wished each other a good day and I headed into Wascana Centre.

I hadn’t planned to walk through the park, but there I was anyway. A flock of geese and gulls was congregated on the lawn next to a bench. On the lake, a lone female mallard was swimming. Sprinklers were watering the grass and the trees, as well as the path. I noticed the memorial for a young man who killed himself in the lake just a few months ago; apparently, when he went to the hospital in distress, he was removed by security. It was during the early days of the pandemic, when everyone was on edge, but the callousness of the hospital staff defies reason. And now that young man is dead. A cyclist passed, and a Bobcat was spreading and smoothing sand along the shore. A broken whiskey bottle lay next to the path. A new, more permanent sign telling pedestrians which way they are supposed to be walking was stuck to the path, and I wondered whether this one-way traffic will be the new normal. 

I was sweating already. I saw a poster advertising self-guided nature hikes, suitable for children bored by the pandemic’s restrictions. Two kayakers floated past and, behind them, someone was on a stand-up paddleboard. He wasn’t wearing a wet suit, and the water is a dirty green colour; I wouldn’t want to fall in. Maybe he has excellent balance. A faded plaque said very little. I heard the slap of waves against the paddleboard. The bicycle racks at the lookout were empty, but a couple were watching the lake. A Wascana Centre employee parked his truck and strode purposefully towards the lookout. He disappeared through a locked door, and moments later, a machine inside roared to life. A woman pushed her child in a stroller. Joggers and cyclists passed. I was breathing heavily now; it was getting hot in the sun. I stopped to drink some water. 

At Broad Street, I pressed the beg button and wait to cross. I noticed the way my backpack creaks. I’m carrying a full pack again—three days of food and water and a bivvy sack—and it’s heavy, especially the water. I heard a tractor behind a row of trees and wondered if someone is having their backyard landscaped. Sweat ran into my eyes. I stopped, fished out my handkerchief, and wiped them. Across the road, a row of willows stood; many of their branches were dead after the long winter. A woman with a bluetooth headset seemed to be talking loudly to herself. The skate park was nearly empty; only one small child was skateboarding, watched by his mother. Perhaps the heat was keeping others inside. Two geese were standing nearby. The sidewalk ended and I stepped onto the desire path. Desire paths, according to a tweet by Robert Macfarlane, are “paths & tracks made over time by the wishes & feet of walkers, especially those paths that run contrary to design or planning” (@RobGMacfarlane). The sidewalks in this city tend to be constructed somewhat erratically, and desire paths often take over when the official concrete walkways stop. Behind me, a little girl complained about bees. Sweat was burning my eyes again. 

Wild liquorice was growing beside the path. I tried to figure out what the shrubs behind it might be. Gooseberries? No, currants, I decided. More sweat had dripped into my eyes. I realize that my shirt was soaked with sweat. The soft dirt path was capturing footprints perfectly. A bird was singing in a nearby chokecherry tree, but I couldn’t tell what kind. The song seemed familiar. Was it a goldfinch? I walked closer, peering into the leaves. I whispered to the unseen bird. And then, there is was: an American goldfinch. How did I guess that? The white flowers of bindweed covered the grass, and on the lake a chorus of geese began honking and just as suddenly stopped. 

The heat reminded me of my walk to Wood Mountain two years ago. I found the notebook I kept during that walk recently, and it tells a different story from the blog entries I posted here. The heat made walking very difficult. I would bargain with myself: get to that next hay bale in the ditch and then you can sit down, I would say. The worst day, of course, was the one when I ran out of water. It was arduous, but I did it anyway. How? Was I that much fitter two years ago? More determined? My pack must’ve been heavier; I would’ve been carrying more gear, more food, and eventually, more water, too. Across the lake I could hear a loud machine running. A newly paved parking lot sat across the road. The only other people in view was a family out for a walk. One of their toddlers was grizzling. 

A large fly hit me in the face and kept on with its journey. Sunflowers were growing in the grass beside the path on one of the city’s two hills. This one was made out of material taken from Wascana Lake when it was deepened in the 1930s; the other is the landfill. Usually I would see runners sprinting up the desire paths on the hill, building their strength; today no one was around, probably because of the heat. Then a group of cyclists passed me. My friends Kathryn and Paul-Henrik were among them. We stopped to chat; we’re going to meet tonight for a drink. They have no car and cycle everywhere, a brave decision in this city. I stepped over a ladybug on the path. Crickets were singing in the uncut grass of the conservation area; the neatly mown lawn next to it was silent. 

I saw a single bur oak beside path—along with trembling aspens, my favourite tree—and I took a photograph. Ahead I could see the bridge over the Ring Road. My eyes were burning again. I passed more bur oaks between a grove of poplars and some Colorado blue spruce trees.  More people were walking on the path now, despite the heat. I climbed the hill to the overpass. Someone had thrown trash beside the highway, on the other side of a fence; thistles were in flower beside the path. Yellow-flowered clematis was climbing the fence, and a bee was fumbling the blossoms. A city employee was smoking a cigarette beside her parked vehicle; she crushed the butt with her foot, climbed in, and drove away. A white cabbage moth flew towards me. I noticed that my notepad was getting sweaty. I was approaching one of my favourite places to walk: a gravel path beside Assiniboine Avenue. A row of poplars and willows had been brutally pruned underneath a power line, and I thought about Ariel Gordon’s notion that the artificial trees represented by power poles take precedence over living trees. A broken and abandoned umbrella was lying on the grass, bearing a cartoon of the Incredible Hulk. Nearby a ripening tomato lay next to a telephone switching box. At the corner, a short funeral procession was heading into the cemetery across the street; there were few cars, probably because of Covid-19 restrictions. I pushed the beg button and waited to cross. When the light changed, I turned and began the long slog down University Park Drive.

Under the ash trees planted next to the sidewalk it was shady, and a cool breeze blew from the north. A dog in a window barked at me. A vintage Chrysler Imperial cruised past. It was garbage day, and a row of wheelie bins—plastic soldiers of waste management—was lined up in a row along the curb. Another garage was being added to a house. The weight of my pack threw me off when I turned to take a photograph, and I realized that, without walking poles, I need to be careful. I pressed the beg button at Arcola Avenue and waited to cross. The sky was cloudless and the pavement shimmered in the heat. Kids on BMX bikes were waiting on the other side of the wide street for the light to change. When it did, the light was barely long enough for us all to make our crossing. I notice a sign: Body Sculpting Regina. Thirty years ago, I looked like a Giacometti sculpture; today I look more like a Henry Moore. Somehow, though, I don’t think that’s the kind of sculpting they have in mind.

I pressed yet another beg button at Truesdale Drive. The xeriscape beside the sidewalk amounted to a stretch of weedy gravel reflecting heat in my direction. I longed for the cool breeze I felt when I turned onto University Park Drive. Then there was no shade at all; I was walking alongside a bald park through which Pilot Butte Creek runs. The air was like a furnace. The breeze reappeared and then disappeared just as quickly. At Arens Road I pressed another beg button. A lawnmower was rumbling across the road. It was too hot to take more photographs. I stopped for lunch and, as I ate, I wondered how much farther I could go. I wasn’t sure I could walk all the way back home—not in this heat. Because we’re going out tonight, I didn’t want to risk heat exhaustion; it makes me unpleasant company. After eating, I made my decision: I would walk to the drugstore in the mall across the way, buy some necessaries, and call home for a ride. Sometimes discretion is the better part of valour.

Works Cited

@RobGMacfarlane. “Word(s) of the day: desire lines.” Twitter, 25 March 2018, 12:00 a.m., https://twitter.com/RobGMacfarlane/status/977787226133278725.

Gordon, Ariel. Treed: Walking in Canada’s Urban Forests, Wolsak & Wynn, 2019.