Walking with a Goal in Mind

Christine and I leave the house early and walk down the alley. We’ll accompany each other around the smaller half of Wascana Lake, then I’ll head off somewhere and she will go home. We stop almost immediately: a baby robin has been crushed by a car. I wonder if it’s the one that wouldn’t get out of the way a couple of days ago; I had to reverse back down the alley and drive around the block to get home. Maybe it fell out of the nest before it was able to fly. There’s nothing to be done. Across the alley, a solitary sunflower catches the morning sun.

My heavy pack feels a little lighter this morning. Am I getting stronger? My camera is swinging around, though, hitting my stomach, and it’s very annoying. The morning is cool—the temperature is autumnal—and we wonder if we should be wearing sweaters. Christine is walking quickly, but she has no pack; I do, and I’m breathing heavily, trying to keep pace with her. She walks down the middle of the empty street, but I’m more cautious, and I stick to the sidewalk. A sprinkler sprays someone’s grass. A homeowner is weeding his tidy lawn. A man is doing something at a little free library, either borrowing a book or leaving one behind. Christine points out the guerrilla garden at the corner of Angus Boulevard; she’s particularly taken by the sculpture that incorporates a teacup. There’s another planting at the end of the block: squash, sunflowers, tomatoes, beans, and a bunch of flowers I don’t recognize. Don’t tell anyone; if the city knew, they would mow it all down.

A dog barks. We walk out of the shady street into the sun, and a squirrel runs across the road. The beg button at Albert Street works immediately; traffic stops, and we walk across, under the elms and onto the lakeside path. Christine has forgotten her sunglasses. We stop at Samuel Uko’s memorial beside the water. I consider putting down tobacco—there’s some in my pack—but it’s really not my tradition, or his, and I wonder if it would be an insult. What would an Elder tell me to do? I imagine the late Noel Starblanket, who suggested that I should put tobacco in with my seeds when I plant the garden. He would tell me to put the tobacco down, and so I do.

The willows beside the lake need pruning. Pelicans glide overhead. We walk together on a short cut, over wood chips instead of on the paved footpath. Samuel Uko’s death weighs on me: the racism of the hospital’s response to his crisis, the lack of mental health treatment in this city, in this province. Heads should roll, but I’m sure nothing will happen or change. A family out for a ride parks their bicycles at the overlook and take in the lake. Boaters row past. The wind is getting stronger. There are pelicans floating on the water, and a crow patrols the shore. Gulls cry. I notice fruit on the path, and realize that I’m standing under a crabapple tree. Christine asks why I’m not using my walking poles. Wouldn’t they help with the weight of my pack? Yes, is the answer, they would, but to take notes, I need both hands free. The leaves are already turning yellow. 

We pass Bar Willow and are followed by the smell of frying onions; the chef is cooking brunch. The parking lot is being resurfaced. A couple sets off from the beach in their canoe; the man, in the stern, is using a kayak paddle. An alert dog and its owner pass by. Geese are floating on the lake in a straight line. A jogger stops and begins making high kicks, like a Rockette. There are more canoeists using kayak paddles; maybe that’s a trend. The water is rough, and the stiff breeze is blowing foam onto the shore. Above, a gull hovers against the wind. 

A gaggle of geese starts honking—because Christine has gotten too close, I think—and poplar leaves tremble in the wind. The geese have eaten the grass here down to the nub, leaving wormwood plants behind. Flags and paint mark a buried SaskPower cable. Young ducks are eating grain left scattered on the shore. An elderly woman removes her hat and starts running. Two women pass by, walking a smiling dog. The trees here are a mixture of willows and Scots pines. A cyclist passes, going too fast for the busy path. Multi-use pathways require common sense, and there’s a shortage of that. I remember walking on a similar path in Ottawa, and watching pelotons of middle-aged men zip past a young mother who was trying to get her toddler to put his shoes back on. So many men display a thoughtless and selfish refusal to consider the needs of others when they’re cycling, and not only then; rather than recognize where they are, or their responsibilities to the people around them, they retreat into fantasies of riding in the Tour de France. I meet a lot of men like that today.

Christine turns to follow a desire path to the lake, and I follow, somewhat reluctantly. The footpath is covered in gravel, and I wonder if it’s a desire path after all. Maybe the park authorities respond to unofficial paths by covering them with gravel? A recumbent willow tree leans away from the water. Two kingbirds argue, squeaking and chirping and whining, perhaps because we’re watching them. A crow squawks. The signs that indicate what direction we’re supposed to be walking—a nod to social distancing—have been torn out and left beside the path. Park employees would’ve taken them away if they were no longer needed. Was it the wind, or was it covidiocy? Ducks are swimming close to shore. I notice a memorial to Ross Thatcher, the right-wing politician from the 1960s, that I have never seen before. It’s beside a rosebush. A lost teddy bear lies beside the path. A trio of British sportscar enthusiasts sit on chairs beside their convertibles, parked at the side of the roadway. A cyclist is finishing repairing a blown tire.

Christine decides to walk to the tipi where Tristan Durocher is on a hunger strike. She wants to show support. So do I, but I’m not sure he needs a big môniyâw hanging around this morning, and I haven’t brought anything tangible: no water, firewood, or tea. I decide to keep walking towards Albert Street. Durocher probably doesn’t need any more empty-handed looky-loos, although I’ve tried to show support in other ways; I sent an e-mail to the province’s minister of rural and remote health, for example, for all the good that will do. This government doesn’t listen once it’s made up its mind. Besides, I find the suicide crisis in the province’s north very upsetting, and Durocher doesn’t need my tears. Later, I read a Facebook post that describes the racist abuse Durocher has been getting, and I realize that I should’ve walked over with Christine. Maybe I’ll take some tea tomorrow. 

The cycling family passes me again, and I notice that the father is a serious rider: he’s wearing cycling shorts and shoes. We cross Albert Street together. I decide to walk along the creek towards the city’s northwest for a change. I haven’t gone that way in a long time, and I wonder if anything has changed. I hear a siren, and an ambulance passes. The straps on my pack groan and complain. There are dying elms not far away, and I wonder if they have Dutch elm disease, or if they are suffering from root compaction after the heavy equipment built the flood-control berm next to them. Dogs bark behind me. Joggers pass. One woman asks if I’m walking the Trans-Canada Trail. Oh, no, I say, just practicing for a hike. Two women are walking towards me; I hear the words “asymptomatic” and “kids” and wonder if they are talking about the province’s feckless and dangerous back-to-school plan. 

A row of bur oaks is taller than the last time I walked this way, and a pet store’s logo has been added to a light post. I think about how walking while taking notes is different from the way I used to walk; I’m less likely to drop into a meditative state now, because paying attention tends to keep me focused on the here and now, even when that’s not necessarily fascinating. In The Rings of Saturn, W.G. Sebald shows how walking can enable an interior journey. Paying attention, taking notes, is a different experience. Is the notepad my interlocutor? How much has the way I walk changed since this spring, when I started carrying a pad and a pen? I see bushes covered with red fruit; my friend Kathleen asked if I knew what they are, and I don’t, except that our neighbours had them when I was a kid, and my parents were sure that the fruit was poisonous. Nothing eats them, so that’s a good guess. A fellow passes me and asks, smiling, if I’m practicing. He can see what I’m up to. I’m sweating despite the cool wind, which tugs at my hat. On the other side of Elphinstone Street, where the path becomes a sidewalk on 17th Avenue, a black ’57 Chevy glides past. Someone has written “R.I.P. FIDGET GANG” on a sign warning of thin ice, and I wonder what that’s supposed to mean. 

I cross the footbridge over Wascana Creek. Weeds are choking the water. I turn onto the gravel footpath beside the creek. Two boys with a net walk past. They don’t answer when I ask what their quarry might be. A mud puddle sits in the usual place. The willows beside the creek provide shade. Dead dogwoods hang over the water. I wonder if they were killed by beavers, girdled during the winter. I sit for a moment on a concrete retaining wall. The purple loosestrife on the edge of the creek is new. A duck swims by. Cyclists pass. I wonder what an unfamiliar shrub might be. Alder? Does that grow here? I think about the walk my friend Hugh is organizing in southwest Saskatchewan, and realize I need time to prepare to teach in September. Could I go for a day or two and then come home? I could use a break, and it would be a tonic to see friends I haven’t seen since the spring, and to see some grassland. But I need to be ahead of things when classes begin, or I’ll be playing catch-up for the entire semester. I stand and walk through the underpass beneath Pasqua Street. The water seems high here, perhaps because of the rain. The underpass beneath Lewvan Drive follows almost immediately, and I can hear the traffic rushing by above me. The Manitoba maples along the creek here are new, as are the weeds on the other side of the path, easily as tall as I am. When I’m in the underpass, the traffic noise disappears—I only hear silence and the wind—but when I emerge, I can hear the cars and trucks again. 

I walk towards the willows where I once saw a hawk. I think about the pictures my friend Luba posted of a hawk sitting in her backyard in Toronto, and I wonder if the hawk I saw here was a Cooper’s hawk. It’s possible. A cyclist passes wearing a bright red jersey. The weather reminds me of walking this spring: windy and cool. The dog park at 13th Avenue is busy. I climb up onto the flood-control dike—carrying this pack, I feel every incline—and notice that people are letting their dogs swim in the creek. Is that a good idea, with the toxic blue algae that always appears in August, fed by agricultural runoff, in the water? A excavator is piling dirt on the other side of the creek. A gopher whistles. I walk under the bridge across Wascana Creek on 13th Avenue and see a training hauling containers heading west. Then I hear its horn at the level crossing nearby. A strap on my backpack blows in the wind and flicks at my ear. There is fresh graffiti on the train bridge over the creek. No golfers seem to be playing at the Regina Golf Club; maybe it’s too windy. Big signs warn that the course is private, and I remember how, one Christmas, when the creek had frozen solid, Christine and I ignored those signs and wandered around on the course. A man on a park bench is reading, but he’s not chatty, even though (or maybe because) he appears to be reading poetry. Roses have grown through the fence beside the golf course; roses are becoming the floral emblem of this walk. Nearby, honeysuckle climbs that same fence. 

I cross 11th Avenue into Optimist Park. I’d better hurry through; I don’t belong here. I have a drink of water and hear a train horn sound behind me. I check my phone and learn that I’m halfway to my goal for today—and to lunch—and I’m happy that my foot isn’t hurting. Maybe my plantar fasciitis is getting better. The trunks of the willows along the creek here have been caged with hardware cloth to deter the beavers. A little girl wearing a pink dress and a pink bicycle helmet rides by, following a man I take to be her father, and another kid in pink follows, with a woman not far behind. Another family out for a Sunday ride, then. Tall sunflowers—at least seven or eight feet tall—stand in a garden next to the path. A game of cricket is underway on flat ground beside the creek, a sign of how the city has changed in the 20 years we have lived here. The players even have uniforms—blue, green—and I wonder if this is an organized league. A blue stencil of a Mountie has been sprayed on the path. What’s that about? I sit down to rest again, and I wonder if I can reach my goal, if I can arrive at my destination.

I text my mother. I’m worried about her; her friend Dorothy is in the hospital and Mom can’t visit her because of restrictions on the number of visitors the hospital allows. I start walking again and pass through the underpass beneath Dewdney Avenue. The wind blows grit off the sidewalk above into my face. I wonder if I’ll see Solomon, my Cree teacher, riding on the path, or maybe walking, given the wind today. I cross the creek on another footbridge and climb onto another flood-control dike. Solomon posts pictures of the animals he sees in his rambles along the creek here—otters, beaver, baby ducks—on Facebook; he’s a gifted wildlife photographer, although I don’t think he would accept that description. I find myself bending under my pack, walking deliberately, focusing on how my body is moving. The wind is getting stronger. I’m approaching McCarthy Boulevard. Should I keep going, or should I take a shortcut up McCarthy? I decide to stay on the path, partly because there’s a chance of running into Solomon. But I’m not lucky today.

A soccer game is underway on the other side of McCarthy Boulevard. Spirea beside the path is finishing, its blossoms turning brown. I decide to skip a detour onto Prairie and Boreal Islands—I can come back another day to visit them. A kid is watching the soccer game, and a kite is caught in a tree. Sage grows in the grass beside the path. I check my phone again; I’m at 60% of my goal. Maybe I have two hours of walking left? Or would it be three? I’m not moving very quickly. I find a fruit bar in my pocket and eat it. A gaggle of geese blocks the path. Kids are fishing in Wascana Creek. I take a short cut across a lawn covered in dandelions. It’s wet; the sprinklers must’ve been on this morning. The wind pushes me off the path. I follow a desire path to another footbridge over the creek; it’s low here, almost blocked by the weir. The wind snatches at my hat. A buff, tanned jogger passes me. I check my phone; my mother hasn’t replied. I see another row of bur oaks, and a couple carries a bucket to the nearby community garden. I walk by the Paul Dojack Youth Centre, the local reform school, and wonder, again, if it’s true that the Regina Indian Industrial School was its predecessor on this site. When the pandemic allows, I’m going to have to visit the Saskatchewan Archives Board and ask to see old maps of Regina. I drink more water.

There is a new foot crossing over the Canadian National tracks, complete with signals, so pedestrians are no longer encouraged to take the long and inconvenient detour back to Dorothy Street. I see no trace of the old desire paths where everyone crossed the tracks; they’ve been obliterated by the fast-growing weeds. When I get to the tracks, I smell warm creosote. Another golf course is across the creek; this one is busier. Cheery yellow potentilla shrubs are growing beside an inviting-looking bench; I’m tempted to sit but decide to keep moving. The sky is clouding over. A desire path leads to a housing development on what used to be a barley field; I remember walking there, picking and eating ripe heads of grain. I am becoming a mere stagger, bent double, my two feet (one starting to hurt) moving, one after the other, in a controlled fall. This is my normal situation at this point in a walk.

I cross an unnamed street. I know that past the condominiums on the right, I will find a bench under some trees where I can rest. I check my phone again; I’m at 70% of my goal. My mother hasn’t texted. Those condos weren’t finished the last time I was here, but now it looks like they are all occupied. Wind chimes on one of the balconies serenades me. I see my bench, underneath some poplars, on the other side of a footbridge across a storm channel, and when I arrive there, I sit to rest. It’s the first time I’ve had my pack off in almost four hours. I sit and feel the cool wind on my back, the warm sun on my face. The wind is a gale now. A little boy cycles past and gravely says hello. After ten minutes or so, I stretch a little, shoulder my pack again, and move on. 

It’s always hard to walk after taking a break, and it takes another kilometre before I’m stepping a little more freely. I cross Sherwood Drive. Yellow toadflax is growing beside the path, along with yellow sweet clover and thistles in seed. I take a photograph of a cell tower. A robin scuttles across the path. He flies away as I fumble for my camera. There are several in the grass, watching us. At 9th Avenue North I press the beg button and wait to cross. The Coopertown development is still a canola field. The sign announcing its imminent construction—it’s been imminent for several years now—has been torn and battered by the wind. It looks forlorn, abandoned. Someone has spray painted a glyph of the planet onto the power poles. At Rink Avenue the footpath ends and I take to the desire path along Courtney Street. This hasn’t changed. Asters, daisies, sow thistle, and gumweed grow along the road. A crow flies overhead. A sign advertises a yard sale. I cross Dalgleish Drive and the desire path hooks right, east of the shallow ditch beside Courtney Street. This hasn’t changed, either. A dog barks at me. I cross the pipeline right-of-way. A circular saw whines behind a fence. The desire path is narrow and deep now, hard to walk on; this is the same as before, too. There’s construction ahead along Courtney Street; perhaps the city is putting in a sidewalk? 

I turn right on Rochdale Boulevard. My destination is getting closer. My phone tells me I’m 80% there. Another dog barks at me. A weeping birch in the front yard of someone’s house has died. Still another dog starts up. Birds are singing in the trees—chickadees and sparrows—and in the distance I hear a crow. I can only hear them because the wind has dropped for the moment. I cross Rochdale Boulevard. I’m hungry and I’m looking forward to lunch. A gopher sees me, squeals, and dives into its hole in one motion. A kid cycles past, and another follows, screaming “Sydney” loudly; she’s on the verge of tears. An abandoned shopping cart sits next to the sidewalk. A hotrodded Vauxhaul—I didn’t know such a thing existed—roars past. I cross Devonshire Drive. The Vietnamese restaurant where I had planned to eat lunch is closed until four o’clock. I’d forgotten about their Sunday hours; they haven’t changed either.

I press the beg button at McCarthy Boulevard and wait to cross. My phone tells me I’m at 90% of my goal. There’s another Vietnamese restaurant just ahead; I’m hungry for pho soup, so I stop and eat. Afterwards, I decide to carry on walking. I’m so close to my goal; why stop now? Two kids riding scooters are doing tricks in the traffic, and a discarded mask lies tangled in the Virginia creeper beside the sidewalk. There are more roses here. I call home and arrange to be picked up at the Shopper’s Drug Mart a kilometre or so ahead; that way I have to keep going. A pedestrian approaches, wearing a black mask. I’m limping now, but that’s normal, too. I step over a discarded sweater on the sidewalk. I cross Stockton Street and plod across the Superstore’s parking lot to the bench where I waited for Christine back in April. It’s another six or eight kilometres back home, and if I had more walking in me, I would keep going, but I’m happy with what I’ve accomplished. A young fellow says I look “ready for the mountains,” and I laugh. A crow patrols the parking lot. The wind yanks off my hat and I decide to hold onto it; I don’t need it now. My mother answers my text. It’s been a good day.