All Winter I Went Walking

Canadian winters are long, dark, cold, and hard. In August, when I thought about the impending pandemic winter it was with nothing short of terror. I knew it would be longer, darker, and harder. I knew I wouldn’t see my friends and there might be parts of myself I had no choice but to lose for a while.

This was also the second winter in a row that things were happening to my body we couldn’t figure out. I was in pain most days and needed sleep but couldn’t get it. Exercise aggravated my symptoms, and ironically, so did laying in bed. Needless to say, the winter was shaping up to be a very difficult one indeed. So. as we all did, I found the things I could do and I did them frequently. Most importantly, I went walking.

To catch the early evening sunsets I walked the four kilometre block around our neighbourhood. Not snow, hail, or whipping winds could stop me. Wrapped in as many layers of clothing as I could bear on my body I would slip out of the house into the street to begin my evening pilgrimage.

Sometimes I spoke to a friend on the phone, other times I relied on the companionship of a narrator reading me stories of other people and other places. Always I watched the skies.

We have a habit, don’t we, of watching our feet while we walk? Initially, when I passed neighbours, I would keep my eyes averted while we kept our safe distance from each other. But it didn’t take long until the comfort of familiarity pulled me away from that habit. Many of them had their walking routine, as I did, so I often passed the same people day after day.

There was a woman who walked quickly, keeping up with two energetic black labs. She simply smiled and said, “hello, nice day.” or, “hi, cold one today”.

There was man training a german shepherd puppy. He stopped every couple of steps, asking the puppy to shake a paw or sit then reward, pulling a treat from his pocket with his ice cold hands. As I passed them he would look at me chuckling, and say, “we’re getting there, aren’t we?”.

There was a man I passed every evening, running, no matter how icy the roads were. I asked him if he ever slipped. He replied, “I haven’t yet. But if I do, it’d have been worth it”.

Sometimes I answered them or we’d have a little conversation, and sometimes I smiled and continued on, holding their words to my chest, reminding me to keep my eyes up.

Halfway through my walk, the houses disappear and instead opens up a view of rolling cornfields. That is my favourite moment, the point at which my breathing became free. Leaving the house in which I’ve been cooped for almost a year, walking streets lined with looming houses and then, suddenly, it falls away revealing an endless view interrupted by nothing except the point where the land meets the sky.

On really cold, windy days I walked by, noticing how the sun was setting over the fields differently than it had the day before. On still, clear evenings I crossed from road to field, squatting to sit or sometimes even laying down in the snow. I would have sat there for hours noting how incredible it was to look at everything and nothing, but eventually the cold would soak through my layers of down and begrudgingly I’d rise to start dragging my body home.

It was often in those moments of the winter, sitting by myself against a tree in the middle of a barren field that I felt the least alone. Every time, even on the days I didn’t want to leave my warm rocking chair and computer, I could feel myself changing, inflating in those fields. I’d feel more human and less human, a way of feeling with which I’ve grown comfortable and a feeling I now miss when I’m back in my rocking chair.

I don’t know what I was meant to learn in my walking, except maybe to that I have so much more than a body. When my body is a threat to itself, as it is when we’re in pain, or to other people, as it is in the time of a pandemic, my mind, my emotions, my being, still have so much to offer as long as I have the will to carry to them to the places that set them loose.

In the end, the winter that I had dreaded, had in fact dug my nails into autumn while winter threatened to drag me into its darkness, was abundant. Though I am anxious to be greeted by spring’s eternal hope, there will be times I will think about the winter I went walking and wish I could return.