A note for you, if you’re having a bad day.
Dear Friend,
What’s your walking style?
I mean a lot of things by that question, so I’ll expand: Where do you like to walk? In what weather? What clothes and shoes do you wear? What do you listen to? Who do you go with? Do you take breaks during your walks? Or stop for anything? What speed are we talking about here?
By the way, “walking” doesn’t have to happen on legs. People can go on walks in wheelchairs, on bikes, or in cars. I’m defining “walking” as meaning moving somewhat slowly from here to there, where the here and the there matter less than the space in between. If you don’t have a walking practice, I invite you to find one. I really do believe there’s a walk that works for everyone.
It’s spring now, which is my new year. My animal body is EAGER. All this daylight gets me out of bed earlier and makes it harder to go to sleep, and I am daydreaming all the time about gardening. Watching things grow is a slow-fast experience, and every year it amazes me: how plants come up out of the dirt, even when such a miracle seems impossible. Yeah, you’re right, this is coming off a little, “Wait, did Wendell Barry and Mary Oliver secretly have a blubberingly vague gardening love child”-y, so let me put this in the terms in which I actually think:
Day 1: Wow. Winter is looooong. The ground is super hard and cold and it has been hard and cold for so long and the sheer coldness of the cold has quite literally burned everything green to char. Putting this gravel-sized speck into the ground and then GETTING IT EVEN COLDER with WATER seems like a hilariously obvious waste of time. But what the heck? I’m told that this is how to let plants know you’re interested in them, so I’ll give it a shot.
Day 3: GET OUT OF TOWN. A GREEN THING IS COMING UP OUT OF THE GROUND? BUT HOW?!?!?! I simply can’t wrap my mind around what would convince that nothing-gravel-seed to unfurl and poke itself out into this crappy gray landscape.
Day 4: IT IS BIGGER. I am STARTLED. When did it manage to get bigger? Am I bigger? This plant and I had exactly the same amount of time, and the plant seems to have DOUBLED in size. What have I done? I re-watched an episode of “Parks and Rec” and ate a small piece of cake. The plant SLEPT OUTSIDE and it GOT BIGGER?!
Day 10: WHAT. SORCERY. IS. THIS. I mean, SERIOUSLY, how is this thing DOING THIS!? Look at it! It’s huge! It’s got a mind of its own! It is reaching for stuff! It has optimism about how sunny things are going to get! AND ITS FRIENDS ARE COMING TO LIFE ALL AROUND!!! This is no less incredible than if the sun came down out of the sky and said, “Hey, what’s up, I can talk!” Basically what I’m saying is that this single thing, this plant, really does seem like it shouldn’t be possible. But here it is! WHY AREN’T WE ALL SCREAMING ABOUT IT!?!?!? Is anyone else SEEING THIS?!
This is the time of year (at least in gardening Zone 5 in the Northern Hemisphere) where walks are essential, because the plants are marching through their elementary school years with each passing day. Before you know it, they’ll be teens, and then they’ll get old enough to not need to flower anymore in order to prove themselves, and by then it will seem impossible that they could ever die, but then they do. Where I live, the deciduous trees get green fists at their ends that remind me of the wet density that butterflies have emerging from cocoons. Things feel like they’re going to burst. And I feel like I’m going to burst too, and it’s kind of nice.
So how do you like to walk? And have you tried walking for ten miles and then eating SO MUCH FOOD? It is the best. If you’re in Chicago, do you want to go on a walk with me? Or if you’re not in Chicago, do you want to COME to Chicago and go on a walk with me? I’ve never met a walk I didn’t like.
See, walking is the perfect verbal embodiment of “enough.” Walking is being in motion; it’s putting one foot in front of the other; it’s not having to rush or to win. Walking lets you stop and notice birds and bugs and say hi to someone you know. (By the way, if you feel safe, let me please encourage you to smile and say “hello” to everyone you see on a walk. Even [especially?] if they look mean. Nothing makes you feel quite as warm as when you say hi to a mean-looking person and their whole demeanor changes and their meanness slides off and you realize that there’s a nice person under there, who was afraid that YOU were a mean person.) Walking doesn’t need you to win. It just wants you to be awake to all the things that life has to offer. And you deserve that. You owe it to yourself.
Love,
Sophie
PS - On my walk this morning I decided to say “Hi” to everyone I saw, and it went really great. Sometimes people don’t say “Hi” back and that’s an excellent way to practice brushing off rejection. Mostly, people so say “Hi” back, and today someone stopped and told me about how she has an orange conure.
Add this to your to-do list.
Daydream out your PERFECT walk. What’s the weather? How long is it? What are you wearing? What are you listening to? Who are you with? Now that you know your perfect walk, let’s see if you can manifest it in the next few months. Or, hey: keep your eye on the weather report and make it happen!
A drawing.
An Instagram comic from a few years ago about walking during quarantine.
What’s on my mind this week.
(This will be about new parenthood. Skip it if you don’t want to read about new parenthood.)
I’ve been taking T on walks every day for the past month or so. At some point she started getting bored of re-watching “Friends” with me in the morning (honestly, good call, T), and started whining as soon as the theme song ended. (She loves the theme song, though.) My sister Alexis gave us an Ergobaby 360, which I didn’t know that we needed but HOLY SHIT WE NEEDED IT. I really tried with baby wraps, you guys. I watched so many videos. But this thing is a backpack you throw your baby in, and she loves it and I love it and it is tied for Most Important Item For Babies with the felt elephant mobile. So anyway, every morning at 8 a.m., I put T in the baby backpack (it should be called that), and I wrap my green coat around her so her feet and hands are tucked away inside my clothes, and then I put a hat on her, and then we walk. We walk one to two miles, and on sunny days, we go on the swings. I love that we get to look at stuff together. I like to count the robins for her, or let her stare at dogs. She never, ever fusses when we are on a long backpack walk. I know this will not last forever, so I am trying to talk her on as many walks as possible, and when bird-watching season starts in Chicago (early May), I hope that Luke will drive with both of us to the woods every single weekend so we can force birds on her. I imagine that for all future years, she will not be interested in birds. So I’m savoring now with my whole self.
Extras.
This jaw-dropping article in The New Yorker by Rachel Aviv about a girl who endures terrible abuse in high school and then gets her funding rescinded from UPenn for eye-popping reasons is the definition of a page-turner. IDK, I couldn’t put it down.
Also I loved this article about people who collect cereal boxes.
I’m still exclusively only listening to Petey, and I just love him more and more. I briefly stopped loving him when multiple people told me he sounded like early Modest Mouse, and honestly, the boys in my high school who were into Modest Mouse were either dweeby or kinda mean, but whatever. I love this album.
My favorite salad dressing is: 1/4 cashews + 1 bunch of cilantro + the juice of a lemon + a jalapeño + salt + a little water, in a blender. YOU ARE WELCOME. AND DE-SEED IT IF YOU HATE SPICE.
I just started my seeds (yes I am late) inside, with an EPIC order from the Seed Savers Exchange — which is a pretty cool organization.
Liana Finck’s new book, “Let There Be Light” comes out next week. I am a fan of her, and she is also just a genuinely lovely person, and this book (a re-imagining of The Book of Genesis) looks incredible.
I’m having to watch more “Sesame Street” videos than I thought I ever would. But on the plus-side, I got to see this incredible Janelle Monae song, which is perfect.
I am a solo hiker, and often start off on the trail as the birds are waking up. When I run into people and their dogs, I am quick to shout "I'm dog friendly!", in the hopes that they will let their dog run over to me and we can love on each other.
I'm planning to visit Chicago in June. Will you tell me your favorite city walks, and your favorite local not-city walks/hikes?
So many things resonated for me in this, maybe even especially the cashew salad dressing. And I'd be dead if I didn't walk.