I walked to work and back today. It wasn’t a long walk–nine and a half kilometres–but it was quite lovely. It was a warm, sunny fall day, a great day to go for a walk. I use the f-word deliberately, because there’s been a chill in the air the past few evenings, and some of the leaves on the poplars are starting to turn yellow. Some of the songbirds have already headed south. It won’t be long before the first frost and then, after that, another winter. I find the winters here very hard. They’re so long and so cold. I used to love the fall, but now it makes me think of winter and that fills me with dread.
As I walked, I thought about my last post here, its negativity and ingratitude, and I felt bad. Yes, walking here isn’t as nice as walking in some other places, but I deliberately chose an unattractive route, in part to create a stark contrast between this city and the Cotswolds. And despite the paved paths, walking in the park here can be very nice. I didn’t have to be so negative.
I thought about the things I want to accomplish in the next 12 months and, as usual, the act of walking helped me think about them in new ways. I also thought about the Camino Francés, which has its unattractive parts: walking into Logroño, for example, or Burgos, or Léon–any of the larger cities. Walking here is no worse than walking in those cities, no uglier and no more dangerous. When I started walking around the city again last spring–I tried to walk during the winter but I got too busy and gave up–I thought about Burgos and Logroño and decided that it was more fair to compare walking here to walking there. What isn’t fair is comparing any urban walk to the Cotswolds. Of course, because there are no footpaths here, because one has to walk along grid roads, the walks in the country here can’t be compared to the Cotswolds, either.
There might be one exception: the TransCanada Trail runs from Lumsden, a village north of the city, to a golf course development called Deer Valley, and it looks like at least part of that trail is a footpath that runs along a creek. I’m going to try that walk this weekend. I won’t have a lot of time for walking as the semester progresses, since I’m going back to school for the first time in 20 years this fall, but the term is just starting, and I’m sure I can make time for one more long walk. It’s supposed to be 32 kilometres from Lumsden to Deer Valley and back. I’ll take my camera, of course, and this time I’ll make a point of looking for subjects that aren’t hard to look at. That’ll be my way of apologizing for my last post.