observations while walking

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Wednesday Walks

Well, somehow October is already half over. So far, I’m enjoying October a heck of a lot more than I enjoyed September, though. Are we finally finding some sort of rhythm, perhaps? Or have the occasionally cooler temperatures simply mellowed me a bit? Hard to say. 

I continue to walk daily, as part of Elisabeth’s CBWC challenge. Near daily, I suppose is more accurate. Let’s take a look at the second week of walks. Several of my walks took place out of state. Here’s a teaser photo – can you guess where I was?

A truly riveting photo, for sure. “WHY are you taking a picture of THAT?” Carla demanded with disdain when I stopped to snap this shot. Why indeed, Carla.

October 8:

I started the day with a lovely three mile walk, accompanied by my friend and writing partner. After the previous day’s drenching rain, today was freshly scrubbed and shiny. I grabbed a photo of a wooly bear although it’s not the most flattering portrait; I find it slightly embarrassing to ask my friend to stop so I can paparazz a caterpillar. She rolled with it, though. 

Perhaps not his best side, but he was a cutie.

October 9: 

A quick one-miler today. This is where Elisabeth’s walking challenge really comes in clutch; I don’t know if I would have forced myself out of whatever stupor I’d been in to go for a walk if it wasn’t for her. As usual, though, I felt much better once I got my rear in gear and enjoyed some fresh air. I also ended up moving all of my vegetable pots – my tomatoes, basil, jalapenos, and zucchini are still producing – in anticipation of some landscaping work we’re having done. 

Now THIS is what fall should look like.

October 10: 

Today, my husband and I loaded Carla into the car, drove to the airport, and flew to Boston for a long weekend! My husband and I have each been to Boston several times, but this was a first for Carla. We checked into our lovely hotel in the Back Bay and took a duck boat tour. Then we spent the rest of the day wandering around Newbury Street. Even though we walked for hours, we only got in seven miles. It felt like more.

October 11:

If you guessed from my teaser photo that we were walking the Freedom Trail, you were right! We took a ferry to the USS Constitution, which was closed to visitors due to the government shutdown, and then did the Freedom Trail in reverse, reading about each stop online as we went. My biggest surprise takeaway was that neither the battle of Bunker Hill nor the Bunker Hill monument took place on Bunker Hill. They were named for where the battle was supposed to take place, but the real battle and monument were on Breed’s Hill. Our day included 9.6 miles of walking and ended in Cambridge. At dinner, my husband ordered a lobster roll, which he deemed delicious. (I prefer my lobster unadulterated by anything but gallons of melted butter.) (I had yummy, yummy halibut.) After dinner, we found ourselves at Carla’s favorite ice cream shop for dessert. She got the same combination (chocolate and raspberry) that she’d fallen in love with during our Paris vacation. We took the subway back to our hotel and I was out like a light.

October 12:

The Nor’easter that the weather people were warning about started spitting on us on Sunday, but we took a train to Salem anyway. I would not recommend visiting Salem in October, unless you love crowds and lines. Everything had a line: coffee shops, bathrooms, kitschy tourist shops. Any attraction available had endless lines and “sold out” signs on the doors. Luckily, my husband – trip planner extraordinaire – had reserved us a walking tour weeks ago. The tour was fun and appropriately spooky, and then our tour guide told us where to eat lunch. The tavern was slightly off the beaten path, and turned out to be a perfect suggestion because not only did we get in immediately, but the food was delicious. My biggest surprise takeaway from our tour was that the Salem Witch Trials lasted a mere thirteen months. Two hundred people were accused, but only (“only”) twenty people were tried and murdered as witches, nineteen by hanging and one by pressing. That minuscule moment in history sure gets a lot of hype! We walked around Salem for 7.8 miles, admiring the creepy sites and shuddering at the crowds, then hopped back on the train to Boston. After a brief stop at Levain Bakery – where we saw the inspiration for my favorite fall cookie in the wild! – we decided we were tired of the rain and weary of walking, so we ate dinner at the Irish pub in our hotel. 

October 13:

I did not do a dedicated walk on Monday, but I will count our pre-dawn hike to the bus stop in pouring rain. No, it was not more than a five-minute slosh from our hotel, but STILL. Despite the growing panic about the storm, our flight was unaffected and we got home around noon. The cat was extremely glad that we’d come home. Apparently the twice-daily visits from the cat sitter AND long daily visits with my parents weren’t enough to convince him he hadn’t been abandoned. 

In this photo from the cat sitter, Leo/Lenny looks like he is on the verge of giving up on life. He has been purring pretty much nonstop since we returned.

October 14: 

Back to normal, and I got in a mid-afternoon 1.6 mile walk around the neighborhood. The leaves are finally starting to don their October finery. I found a tree that matches my nail polish!

Blue skies, gorgeous leaves, and fun fall fingernails!

And that’s another week of fall and another week of walks in the books.  

Have you ever been to Salem? Did you, like me, go through A Witchy Phase (mine occurred in middle school, but I still enjoy witchy things)? What is the most crowded tourist attraction you’ve ever visited?

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Fall Photos Friday

Elisabeth’s walking challenge has been surprisingly challenging for me this month. So far, out of 25 days, I’ve only managed to take a walk on 15 of those. (I plan to take a walk today, but it’s early yet.) I’ve spent a lot of time berating myself: how hard is it to take a ten-minute walk? Especially when you have access to a) a very walkable neighborhood and b) beautiful walking paths and c) A TREADMILL. Comparison is the thief of joy and all that, but I feel like an utter failure compared to someone like Engie, who has a full-time job and still manages to walk multiple times a day. Perhaps I need a dog. 

This week has been much better. (And I did walk on Wednesday, with two friends and a dog. I have a clear memory of programming “outdoor walk” into my watch, but seem to have done something to prevent it from recording.) 

The weather – which has been beautiful beyond belief – makes me want to be outside all the time. It’s been the best of all seasons here: warm and sunny, but not humid, and flowers are still blooming, but also the trees are a panoply of vivid colors. Mornings and evenings are cool enough for a jacket, the days are warm enough for tank tops and even shorts.

I keep goggling at the leaves, trying repeatedly to capture their vibrancy with my phone, and failing. It’s a beauty I’m unable to adequately translate to digital imagery. Every time I’m outside, I’m drinking in the colors, trying to store them up for winter’s bleak monochrome.

I keep pointing out trees to my daughter on our drives – “Look! Look!” – and she has been humoring me, and pointing out especially beautiful specimens herself. The other day, my husband picked her up from school, and apparently wanted to stop to photograph some startlingly red trees on the drive home, and my daughter moaned, “You sound like Mom!”

Carla has been “hired” a few times to puppy-sit for one of our neighbors. It’s now dark when she goes to do his bedtime routine, so I’ve been accompanying her. (I don’t go into their house at all; that would be weird. I just lurk outside in the dark, looking at my phone, which is much less weird.) She and I take the puppy on a final evening walk, both of us inhaling deeply of the night air, tinted with the promise of winter, both of us gazing up at the stars. Carla tries to get the puppy to admire the moon; so far, he is unimpressed.  

My husband, not usually one for walks, has initiated two! walks! this week alone! Fall is his favorite season and I wish it would last forever just for the opportunity to trudge through the fallen leaves with him, hand in hand, talking about all sorts of the mundane things you discuss with your partner. 

One of my favorite things about fall is stepping on acorns. The crunch under my heel is so satisfying. I am a little reluctant to do so when I’m walking with others, though – there’s something a little childish, a little embarrassing about doing so among friends. Perhaps that’s why there’s so much joy in it, because it feels like a call back to childhood? Another thing I love about fall is the cloud cover. It’s not oppressive, as in winter. It’s joyful and painterly and somehow distinct from the sky in other seasons.

I have been obsessed with a bank of trees I walk by frequently. It’s a copse of ALL the colors, their brightness cranked up to 11. We had a windy day the other day, and they are beginning to release their leaves to the inevitability of time’s passing, and I’m trying not to see it as a loss, but as a harbinger of the austere beauty to come: snow and ice and bare limbs scraping a cloud smudged sky.