I’ve been hiding inside for a couple months. I walked my way through the fall and most of winter. Then I signed some divorce papers and fell into a bit of a funk. I told myself I was worried about pollen and didn’t walk my way out the funk. Eventually, enough time had passed that I really was worried about the pollen.
For the last week, I’ve been waiting for the leaves. Watching for them to show up big enough, green enough to prove that the time for pollinating was done. Yesterday I did a test-run-walk around the block. Sunday I did a real one, my regular route, the whole shebang.
I set out during golden hour, 83 degrees with a slight breeze. I turned a corner and saw a grove of green-can-you-believe-it-green trees at the exact moment a soft cool breath of air hit me. Overcome with joy, I cackled like a cartoon villain.
Every walk feels like a gift, whether it’s a good walk or a not so good one. Even on the bad ones—where I notice at the end that I’ve walked the whole way with my head down, or my feet hurt, or I have a line from that dang “Havana” song stuck in my head—there is always a moment: a gust of air, a sudden birdsong, a misstep, where I look up and notice what’s there.
This inaugural walk of spring was a good one. I walked, noticing the descending sun kiss the clouds, coloring them pink and gold against a vivid blue backdrop. A fat robin sang to me from a fence-post and two thin ones thundered past at top speed, showing off. A pair of geese winged it low across the sky, their calls echoing off twilit rooftops.
I have favorite trees: a willow, three bushy needles pines who I think of as sisters, a tree whose needles turned bright orange and dropped off last year, a row of nine swooping pears, and a blue needled pine.
The Sisters are my especial favorites and while I greeted all the others, they made me Pause. Being evergreen, they met me with the fewest changes: just a bit greener, a bit bushier. I walked a bit quicker when I saw them first appear in the distance. In winter, they shielded me, their bushy branches filtering out snow, wind, and sound. To step into the sphere was to re-enter warmth and peace and life and I loved them for it.
Now it is spring, and when I stepped into their sphere on this walk, I was already warm and birdsong cuts through coniferous branches in a way that a cold wind just can’t. This time, they were not the only green thing in sight. But they have not changed much. They have not come back to life like their deciduous cousins, they simply have-been-are-will-be. To me, though, they must be different trees, summer and winter, and I will look for ways to cherish both.
I can tell that on my summer walks, I will not be a lone soul, blood of the north. The neighborhood is out in force: basketball hoops and baseball mitts—throw me a pop fly a pop fly!—lawn chairs and charcoal grills, Garage Dads cold beer in hand. Exuberance replaces stillness; the sticky sweetness of summer sweat replaces the tangy taste of COLD. I detoured across the street to avoid a pickup game and noticed, the walks are changed: I do not venture into stillness to rouse myself; I wander among the living and find myself awake.
Lindsey Grundyson 