Weeks of Worried Walking

For the past few weeks, I’ve been trying to go for walks. Walking helps ease my anxiety about the Covid-19 pandemic–at least sometimes. Other times, despite my intentions, I end up staying in the house, listening to the news and worrying, or trying to manage teaching online, which has turned out to be a lot more work than I had imagined. Turning off the radio, shutting down Facebook, that would help; and yet sometimes it’s very hard to do. And often, when I do get outside, walking doesn’t help. It just gives me a chance to ruminate and play out worst-case scenarios in my mind. I don’t imagine I’m alone in any of this.

My first walk, once the sidewalks were free of ice, was a rather long trudge to the university and then around Wascana Lake–long enough that my feet, tender after a winter without much walking, blistered. It was a sunny afternoon, and the path around the lake was packed with people, most of whom had not apparently heard of the term “social distancing.” I haven’t been back there since. Maybe it would be okay early in the morning, or when the weather is bad, but there are other places to walk that are less crowded, and possibly more interesting, too.

I’ve been for several short walks since then, usually with Christine, along the creek and in the park at the end of our street. They haven’t been long enough to help me shake the sense of impending doom the news leaves me with. Refreshing the Worldometer page on global Covid-19 infections hasn’t helped, either. Watching the global numbers ticking upwards, and the steep upward curve of the graphs–it’s frightening, because there’s nothing that can be done to stop it, except staying home as much as possible. I’m doing that–so are most of us, I think–and yet the number of infections seems to be increasing rapidly.

Today I think I’ve had some kind of breakthrough. At least, I went for a longish walk out to the city’s northwestern suburbs, where I met Christine at a drug store–we needed dental floss and mouthwash; there was no toilet paper, of course. As walks go, it wasn’t that long, just six kilometres, but I found the pandemic, or my fear about the pandemic, releasing its grip. I even found myself somewhere I hadn’t expected to be; not lost exactly, but surprised, which is a nice feeling in a city where it sometimes feels like I’m been over every possible walking route. I felt my breath, inhaling, exhaling. I thought about the photos Phil Smith posts on Facebook, photos of odd signs and abject, beautiful, and broken things, and I wondered if I could take similar photographs while walking here today. That explains the photos of abandoned objects and trash.

The point is, even though it wasn’t a long walk, it was productive. I feel better. I tried looking at things differently. I surprised myself. Maybe now I’ll be able to return to the book I started weeks ago and then put down when the bars and restaurants closed and the government asked us to stay home. I’ll take that as a win.