Month: August 2020

A Long Walk for a Bowl of Soup

I’m off to a late start this morning. Christine went swimming, and I waited until she got home so we could have breakfast together. But I’m on the road now. As I walk east along College Avenue, I watch two well-dressed men, laughing, photograph a power pole. I spot them again a few blocks away, and they are still laughing. I wish I’d heard the joke. The elm trees and their canopy of cool shade remind me of Richard Powers’s book Overstory, which I finished on Saturday, particularly the account of chestnut blight, which, like Dutch elm disease, destroyed forests throughout eastern North America, although the chestnuts, according to Powers, were like eastern redwoods in size and age—not something one could say about the comparatively short-lived elms. “Short-lived”—although their lifespan outstrips a human’s: my anthropocentric misunderstanding of trees says a lot. My pack is lighter today; I’m carrying less water and food, which could end up being a problem later. This might be my last walk before I attempt the Bypass, and I wonder if I’ll be able to cover the distance in three days, perhaps with occasional deliveries of water. I want to make that journey before classes begin. I notice a janitor spraying herbicide on the playground of Crescents School. Is that really necessary?

It was cold this morning, but it’s getting hot now. I spot a poster on a streetlight: an orange cat is lost. Fragments of plastic from the car accident still litter the sidewalk, and the downed NO PARKING sign has been removed. At the corner of Albert Street, the boulevard planting includes tall corn plants, rudbeckia, and the inevitable petunias. I turn north. Someone has scattered peanuts all over a bus shelter: transit squirrels? I push the beg button to cross 15th Avenue. Maybe I mention beg buttons too often, but I’m interested in counting the number of times that pedestrians have to wait for vehicle traffic, and I’m curious about whether green lights are shorter if the beg button hasn’t been pushed. I’m distracted this morning, thinking about the Bypass walk. What’s missing from my pack? I haven’t put in a toothbrush, or a little bottle of aloe vera (I’m sure to get sunburned), or Rolaids (a quick treatment for heat exhaustion). Do I need another notebook? Do I have the cables that connect my charging battery to my phone? I seem able to walk upright now; with the lighter pack, I’m not bent under its weight. I notice a mask abandoned next to the sidewalk. Two young women, wearing masks, are waiting for a bus.

At 13th Avenue, the beg button is broken. I wait to cross. The sidewalk is still closed at Victoria Avenue, so I cross to the other side of Albert with a cyclist and a woman with a stroller and a parasol. One baby is in the stroller; she’s carrying the other on her chest. She looks tired. I stop to look at the vacant lot at Victoria and Albert, the legacy of a failed condominium and hotel project, but also of a failed housing policy: after all, the building that used to stand here, the Plains Hotel, gave shelter to many people who could afford nothing better. There is spray paint on the sidewalk—an omen of more construction? An office building has become “executive suites.” Are there that many executives here who need furnished apartments? I cross to the other side of Albert, accompanied by a woman carrying a shopping bag. An impatient motorist creeps up behind me on the crosswalk. At Saskatchewan Drive, other drivers frown at me. I walk through the underpass beneath the Canadian Pacific tracks. There is trash everywhere, and more pigeons than I remember. Magnetic tape is unspooled on the sidewalk. City workers are collecting garbage behind a row of trees. A cyclist passes me, then walks his bike up the small hill that leads out of the underpass. A dead sparrow lies in the harsh sunlight.

There is a long lineup to return bottles and cans for the deposit at Sarcan. I nearly step in dog shit, but I’m warned by a cloud of buzzing flies. A cardboard cat-scratching pad sits next to a building. I cross Dewdney Avenue, and wonder if the city council will decide to change its name. A car alarm honks. A sign reads, “Longevity is a blessing, funding it is a challenge. We can help.” More businesses have closed, and more storefronts are for rent. I drink some water. Across a vacant lot, flowers have been painted on a shipping container. I step over pamphlets about HIV and hepatitis C, and abandoned playing cards and empty coffee cups. A dead mouse lies on the curb. The International Church of God, a sign tells me, is on the second floor. There’s not much fruit on the volunteer chokecherry next to an auto parts store. I cross 4th Avenue. Outside Tim Horton’s, two little girls climb on a bike rack as it if were a set of monkey bars. A billboard urges us to vote by mail. I turn west on Avonhurst Drive. I can feel my pack getting heavier. I’m walking under mature elm trees in a neighbourhood that’s about as old as me. A Purolator driver delivers a package, and a dog barks. 

I press the beg button and wait to cross Elphinstone. There’s a sudden cool breeze, which doesn’t last. Avonhurst Drive becomes Argyle Street. I cross Sherwood Drive, where a discarded rubber glove lies on the sidewalk. I see another mask, tossed next to the sidewalk. It’s close to noon now, and it’s getting hot. I stop in the shade of a tree and take a drink of water; then I cross the Ring Road on the overpass. I haven’t walked this way for a year or two. A child’s blue wading pool lies under a stoplight. A woman wearing a face shield boards a bus. I turn west on Sangster Boulevard. A row of tiny cedars has been planted on the north side of a fence; maybe the shade will help them survive. Another mask lies beside the curb. The sidewalk ends, then begins again, and then ends; pedestrians seem to have been an afterthought when this neighbourhood was designed. I walk past a lovely front garden, with sunflowers, herbs, and fruit trees. It’s the kind of garden that says “I care enough about this place to work hard,” although since I like to garden, I’m biased. It could just as easily say “I’m privileged enough to have the time and money to make this nice place for myself.” 

I push the beg button and wait to cross Pasqua Street, an extension of Lewvan Drive. There are eight lanes of traffic here, and the green light gives me 30 seconds to cross them. I walk north in an alley and, when the alley ends, on the grassy right-of-way, under sweet smelling poplars—no doubt the reason for their common name, “balsam poplar”—and beside sunflowers and strawberries. I cross a pipeline right-of-way and think about the number of pipelines that cross this city. Then I walk through the Home Depot parking lot. My stomach and my watch both say it’s lunch time. I cross Rochdale Boulevard and turn west. There are roses and crabapple trees and buffaloberry trees next to the sidewalk. A city worker is pruning and weeding the Virginia creeper. I startle her without meaning to, and wonder if she’s surprised because nobody walks this way, or because she doesn’t feel safe even in broad daylight. 

I’m in a school zone now, and perhaps it’s because the reduced speed is enforced by photo radar, according to a sign, but the traffic is slow and I feel much safer. There’s a skate park across the street, between a public and a Catholic high school. I stop for lunch—Thai soup—and when I leave, I smell woodsmoke in the air. I wonder if it’s from the huge fires burning in California, or if the source is nearby. A kid on a skateboard is making a video in the parking lot; other kids with skateboards are there. Later I see the kid with the camera speeding south on a busy street in the middle of the road, riding against the traffic. Kids think they’re immortal. A middle-aged man in a black Corvette plays the Eagles’s “Witchy Woman”: too many clichés for one sentence to bear. Children cycle past. I cross Rochdale and head south on McCarthy Boulevard. I see a rabbit on the lawn of the Catholic high school. It bolts when it sees me. A ladybug crashes into my face. A baby poplar tree is growing out of the lawn at the base of a streetlight. I cross back over the pipelines. Behind me, a muscle car roars through the intersection. An ancient orange Dodge van chugs past. Hiphop rumbles from a car waiting at a stoplight. I push the beg button and wait to cross McCarthy Boulevard in the shade of an ash tree. A 50-year-old Mercury, lovingly restored, passes me. I’m acting like a little boy, noticing all the passing automobiles. I hear some chickadees in a tree, and realize I’ve heard very few birds today. Why is that? Could it be the heat? Have they started heading south already? 

Sticks lean against a power pole in an imitation of a strange pagan rite. I’m full from lunch and rather uncomfortable. I cross 9th Avenue North. On the other side, cyclists pass me, and I smell burning fat coming from a burger joint. I suddenly think that I have nothing to say about this tidy suburban neighbourhood, that all of its strangeness has been pared away. Then I notice a sign asking pedestrians to watch for a lost cat, and footprints imprinted in the sand left over from the winter, and the cars parked in the bicycle lane, and the plastic Labrador retriever sitting pretty on a front porch, and I realize that some strangeness is still here. Besides, I’m strange enough, this big, sweaty man carrying a big pack and a camera, intently taking notes about what he sees, and worst of all, walking. I’m feeling my plantar fasciitis now, but it’s not that bad. There’s an abandoned house near one corner. I hear a roofer’s air hammer. I cross 1st Avenue North and see a lone bur oak between clumps of spruce and fruit trees. It’s hotter now, and the traffic is loud. The heat must be getting to me; I mistake a short wooden post for a small dog. As I realize what I’m looking at, a real dog starts howling. I decide to take a rest break under a popular tree, next to a wolf spider’s nest in the grass. I feel sweat trickle down the small of my back. I’m tired. The tree’s exposed roots have been damaged by lawn mowers. There’s a haze in the air to the south—could that be the California wildfires? I read an article on my phone about the environmental damage that will be caused by the provincial government’s $4 billion irrigation scheme. Then I stand up, haul my pack onto my shoulders, and start walking again. What are we to do when our leaders are hellbent on ecocide? I’d never vote for the Saskatchewan Party, but they’re likely to be re-elected. Then what? Why do most people here support this government? It is a mystery to me.

I notice another abandoned mask on the sidewalk. Someone has set up a hose to spray a cooling mist onto their patio. It’s a nice idea in the heat, but it’s also a waste of the water that’s piped 100 miles to get here, especially since nobody is sitting on that patio. It’s empty. The water is just adding to the uncomfortable humidity. Tall plants with pink columnar flowers line the boulevard, and bees and cabbage moths are feeding there. Dogs bark. I wonder what those plants are; I’ve never seen them before. Is this a deliberate planting? A low rumbles comes from the city sewage pumping station. I cross 4th Avenue. My pack straps squeak with every step I take. I cross the creek, cut through a gas station, and head east on Dewdney Avenue. The boulevard planting here is another mystery. It looks like someone has bought one of those wildflower mixes that are sold at garden centres and planted the seeds here. It’s very colourful, although to call it “wildflowers” is probably a misnomer, since nothing I can see is actually native to the northern prairies. I cross the creek again, and notice the ducks and geese paddling about. There are no red-winged blackbirds here, though, and no robins, and the creek is silent without them. I pass another face mask, and a plastic poppy left from Remembrance Day last November. I cross Dewdney—the south side looks to be shadier—and a dog on the north side barks and runs towards the road. It’s called back by its owner, but I wonder if I just missed getting bitten. 

I pass Optimist Park, with its baseball and football fields, surrounded by tall lights for night games. I pass Luther College and turn south to walk alongside it. My plantar fasciitis is hurting now. I walk into a street of wartime houses—those wooden prefabs built for returning veterans. Air conditioning hums. I notice a front yard vegetable garden, but it’s been neglected; the spinach has bolted, the peppers are withered, and I wonder what happened. I turn east on 11th Avenue. Mosaic Stadium looms in the distance. Sage grows in a lawn, the ghost of the prairie. I turn south again, on a street of postwar bungalows. I can hear children in one of them, loudly disputing the results of a game. I stop on 12th Avenue to listen: silence, just the whir of a pair of grasshoppers on someone’s lawn and the hum of an air conditioner’s compressor. It’s too hot for any activity. Everything is still. A stamp on the concrete sidewalk reads “1962.” The sidewalk is older than I am. I mistake the sound of an idling pickup truck for a locomotive on the CP tracks a block away. I can feel a blister forming on the sole of my left foot, in the usual place. I hear the traffic on Lewvan Drive. 

Then I’m at the footpath under the CP tracks. I walk in the shade of spruces, Russian olives, and poplars. Then I’m at 13th Avenue, and I’m nearly home. I push the beg button and wait to cross Lewvan Drive. I wonder if 30 seconds will be enough time to hobble across. When I get to the other side, I smell artificial flavours—bubblegum, fruit—and wonder where the smell is coming from. Next to the sidewalk, sow thistle grows as high as my armpits. I consider stopping at 7/11 to buy some ice cream, then decide against it. Two young women jaywalking across 13th stop traffic; a rabbit, running across a minute later, does the same thing. I stop to take a photograph of a demolished house and continue walking down an alley. Gravel crunches under my feet. Tall goldenrod is covered in delirious bees. Behind a fence, a small dog barks. I turn east on 15th Avenue. I stop again and listen to the same silence I heard before: distant traffic and air conditioning, someone spraying water from a hose. Otherwise, it is quiet. I decide to cut through the park. I cross the newly mown football field, pass the community art centre, and exit onto College Avenue. I have three blocks left to walk. And then I’m home. I take off my boots and my feet are damp and pruny—a warning about removing my boots when I stop to rest. I shouldn’t need that reminder, but I do feel silly in the city, sitting somewhere, barefoot with my acrid socks lying beside me. Maybe on the Bypass I’ll feel a little less ridiculous.

Walking Bodies: Papers, Provocations, Actions

My author’s copy of Walking Bodies: Papers, Provocations, Actions, edited by Helen Billinghurst, Claire Hind, and Phil Smith arrived today. It’s a collection of papers from the Walking’s New Movements conference in Plymouth last November; my contribution, a chapter, is an expanded version of my paper.

Walking Bodies: Papers, Provocations, Actions

That chapter, “White Man Walking: Settler Ambulation in Colonised Spaces,” sits alongside work from a variety of walking artists and radical walkers, and I’m proud to be in such company.

If you’re interested in getting a copy of the book, you can order one from Triarchy Press in the UK: http://www.triarchypress.net/walkingbodies.

Walking on a Hot August Day

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It’s a cool morning, although the forecast calls for a hot day. I slept through my alarm, which means I get to eat breakfast with Christine, although it also means getting off to a late start. I shoulder my pack and do up the waist strap. It seems to be getting lighter—or is that just an illusion? I head off down the alley. The fancy “W” graffiti on a neighbour’s wall might be a gang tag; I’ve seen it elsewhere as “Warriors.” Someone has abandoned a vacuum and a pile of brush shows the result of someone’s pruning. Someone else has planted an Ohio buckeye tree right next to a power pole; that’s not a good idea, since those trees grow very tall. At some point, SaskPower will end up pruning that tree, brutally. The dust I’m walking on is covered in confused footprints. Chickadees are singing.

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Jackrabbits are sleeping in the vacant lot that the city apparently thinks is a park. They wake up when they hear my footsteps. A dog barks. I think about John Davies’s book. He wrote about the high points of his walks, giving us a summary, whereas I’ve been writing these step-by-step accounts since the spring. Which is more readable? I’m not sure. Another dog, further up the alley, starts barking. Tomatoes share a garden with petunias. An abandoned ladder lies in the grass. More dogs are barking now. Maybe Davies’s approach, and mine, both work; maybe they are just different. I walk past a new house that I’ve heard is built across three lots. Does that mean the new owners will pay three times the property tax? The house is still unfinished; the work is taking a long time. Old folks cycle past on the flood control dike ahead of me.

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I climb up onto the dike. A Manitoba maple is covered with a golden froth of seeds. Someone has put up a notice about lost car keys. I cross Wascana Creek on the wooden footbridge. Someone has left mysterious graffiti on the bridge’s wooden arch. I hear a flurry of hammering. Someone is roofing—this early, on a Sunday? It’s a lesson in how to make oneself unpopular with one’s neighbours. I’ve put on sunscreen, as the doctor who froze off my actinic keratoses told me to do, and it’s running into my eyes. I walk past the entrance to Lakeview School. It was built in 1930, and I wonder if construction started before the extent of the Great Depression was understood, or if it was a response to the stock-market crash, a make-work project. I turn south on Garnet Street. A squirrel scrambles up an elm tree. This neighbourhood’s built environment is changing, with new, modernist boxes juxtaposed against the older, more modest houses. It reminds me of Chicago’s Bucktown neighbourhood. I turn west on McCallum Avenue, named after one of the developers responsible for this neighbourhood, back before the First World War. I pass a boxy United Church and a front yard covered in junipers. To the north, I hear a freight train blowing its horn as it approaches the level crossing on Elphinstone Street. I can hear the locomotives rumbling this far from the tracks. Sound travels far on a quiet morning like this one.

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Sculptures of fantastic creatures sit beside someone’s driveway. In the distance, I can hear church bells. A large vegetable garden covers someone else’s front yard. Rudbeckia flames in the morning light. I walk south on Queen Street, which is interrupted by Grassick Avenue after one block. A husky being walked on the par-three golf course resembles a coyote. I turn south on Kings Road. The golf course is busy. Christine played with one of her friends on Friday and came home saying she has a natural gift for golf. A cryptic sign plays with the conventions of lost and found. It’s getting hot already, and I’m starting to sweat. A battered, classic VW Beetle sits in a driveway. I turn west on Hill Avenue, named after the other developer who built this neighbourhood, and one of this city’s richest families. An ear worm is bothering me: Lou Reed’s “Busload of Faith.” Is that appropriate for a Sunday morning walk past silent churches? I turn south on Queen Street—why does it carry the same name as the street further east and north?—and a jogger passes, a young woman I taught last year, I think. Geese fly overhead, honking. 

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I stop to look at our allotment garden. This is our last year here, and it makes me feel sad. I’m tired of the allotment’s inexplicable rules—just yesterday, we were warned that straw mulch is prohibited, which makes little sense in such a dry place, since mulch helps to conserve soil moisture—and the way that those rules are enforced through inspections and rude e-mails. After ten years here, I’ve grown tired of the way the allotment is run, but it still feels like a loss. I tried a three-sisters garden this year, and it hasn’t quite worked. The squash is flowering, but there isn’t much fruit, and the pole beans aren’t climbing the corn plants. Maybe I planted the corn too close together? It’s hard to say. I think it’s more of a success than the last time I tried this method, though, when the beans grew too quickly and ended up pulling the corn plants over. A volunteer sunflower has appeared, and a volunteer dill (a prohibited plant in this garden, along with roses and horseradish, for some reason) is in flower. The last rhubarb plant waits to be dug up and taken home. I notice several small summer squashes. A bumblebee dances on a corn leaf. Thistles and sow thistles are hidden in the thick planting. The neighbour’s cucumbers are growing into our potatoes. 

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I pick a few weeds, including a giant ragweed, and then carry on south on Queen Street. More geese fly past, a sign of the approaching autumn. I put on more sunscreen. A discarded mask lies on a driveway. I can hear the traffic roaring past on Lewvan Drive. I turn west on 25th Avenue. There are no sidewalks here, just a desire path next to the road. I’m walking in the shade of a row of poplar trees. Then I take a shortcut through a parking lot. One net is up at the neighbouring beach volleyball court. A gopher runs across a mown lawn towards its hole. As I get closer, it sounds an alarm and disappears inside. Now I’m walking south on Pasqua Street, another road without sidewalks. It’s dangerous here. I press the beg button at Parliament Avenue and wait to cross. When the light changes, I carry on walking west, past a deep excavation, a grassy hole that’s intended to capture storm water, I think. Another pedestrian is waiting to cross Lewvan Drive. He steps out into the road against the light—not a good idea. I wait until the light turns green, and I barely get across before the light turns red again. A Tim Horton’s tempts with sugar and fat and caffeine, but I keep walking. The Harbour Landing billboards I mocked earlier this summer have been repaired. A fence around a vacant lot promises more construction. My eyes burn as more sunscreen drips into them. A telephone switching box has been broken open.

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Another pedestrian approaches, followed by a jogger and a cyclist. Across the street, construction of an office building carries on even though it’s a Sunday. A radio plays music. There’s a cooling wind starting to blow from the northwest. A row of Rocky Mountain junipers is dying beside a concrete wall. Two guys on riding mowers are cutting down a field of wild sunflowers. I turn south on Campbell Street. There is fresh tar on the road and it fills the air with the smell of oil. To the west is a huge field of lentils; behind it, I can see the Bypass. On the other side of the wooden fence beside the road, I can hear the mowers humming and snapping. Pedestrians have left footprints on the road’s tarred surface. Something in my pack is making a slapping sound; maybe it’s the water I’m carrying. Now there are new houses beyond the fence; some unfinished, some occupied. A gopher repeatedly whistles its alarm. Willow trees surround sloughs in the lentil field. Crickets are singing. The wind has subsided into a gentle breeze. My plantar fasciitis is starting to hurt. The houses on the other side of the fence are all occupied now; I can see awnings, curtains, patio umbrellas, the spray of a sprinkler. I’m leaving footprints in the tar, just like everyone else who has come this way. 

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There are so many annual sunflowers here, in yards, beside fences. That’s not surprising; annual sunflowers are among the first native plants to move into disturbed spaces, and this is a textbook example of a disturbed space. Smoke is rising in someone’s backyard, and I wonder who would be barbecuing at ten o’clock in the morning. I manage to peek over the fence: it’s a smoker, not a barbecue. Someone is cooking dinner. A cyclist passes with a dog running alongside. I can hear a lawn mower. I pass the offices of the Sherwood rural municipality, and decide that Campbell Street must mark the city limit. I hear a train horn far behind me. The cyclist with the dog has turned around and is heading back in my direction. She’s cautious; the dog isn’t friendly, it seems. I’m not noticing the smell of tar any more. Wasps are flying around me.

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There’s a concrete barrier across Campbell Street at Gordon Road. I walk around the barrier and keep going south. Kids are walking in a field of ripening barley. The complicated highway overpass where the Ring Road meets the Bypass is in the background. Hotdog buns moulder in the road. I reach a pipeline right-of-way and decide to turn back east. Steel fences separate the neighbouring houses from the right-of-way. A rabbit runs through the fence and across a vacant lot; another runs past me. I can hear an electric saw and what seems to be an argument—raised voices, anyway. I notice an alley, an odd feature in a new development, and hear a dog’s muffled barking. I realize I don’t know the name of the street I’m walking on, but that I know where I am, more or less. I’ve crossed a boundary from new Harbour Landing to an older neighbourhood; here there are maturing trees, the concrete driveways are scuffed and stained, and some of the houses need paint. A sign asks passersby to watch for a lost cat. Grackles squeak in a park, and a robin flies out of a row of trees—a few aspens, a Russian olive. A female robin sits on a branch, preening and watching me. The street I’m walking on turns south and then back west again, and I decide to retrace my steps and walk through that park. I have a sense of being caught in a maze of streets. I notice a familiar site—a park built on top of the pipeline right-of-way—and turn east again. The houses here are small, the lots tiny. I sit on a rock in the park for a minute. All of these little houses, I realize, are duplexes. They are big enough to contain two bachelor apartments. I wonder if one of those units is in the basement. A strange symbol is cast into the concrete trash can and I wonder what it means.

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I decide to start walking again. Now I’m passing blocks of condominiums. I can smell natural gas. A tiny plastic monkey is lying on a lawn. Behind the neighbouring stories, more construction is underway. I decide to stop for coffee and an early lunch. Afterwards, I carry on towards Gordon Road. A ghostly voice echoes from a home-improvement store, and a frog is croaking somewhere. A police car is blocking the intersection at Gordon Road; there’s been a car accident. I pass an abandoned shopping cart, and I wonder if it’s the same one I passed here weeks ago, or if it’s a different one. To the right is the Lancaster, the pub where I used to watch football with my friends, before the pandemic. I miss the light at Lewvan Drive, and push the beg button and wait to cross. Once again, I barely get across before the light turns red. How do older people, or folks with physical disabilities, get across this busy road? The city needs to think about the needs of pedestrians. Sidewalk hieroglyphics have something to do with buried SaskPower cables.

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It’s close to noon now, and the traffic is heavy; the city is awake. Signs advertise exterminators, painting, and garage sales. Garbage left in a bus shelter looks like the aftereffects of the mugging of a tourist: a men’s razor, nail clippers, bank cards, a toothbrush. A phalanx of Harley Davidsons rumbles past. I walk past a shattered car headlight and a lost shirt. My plantar fasciitis is hurting now; my sense on my last long walk that it was getting better has turned out to be overly optimistic. Another mask lies next to the sidewalk. What is wrong with people? I check my phone; I’m halfway to my goal for today’s walk. My pack is getting very heavy. The Rainbow Towers is an apartment building painted in two colours, blue and white. An incredibly loud hot rod passes—a late-model Mustang—roaring and spitting. Applebees is advertising two dollar Bud Light. Who would want it, even at that price? A horn honks and a turbo diesel pickup whistles past. A dead pigeon lies beside a telephone switching box.

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I cross Albert Street and keep going east. I see another concrete trash can and realize that the symbol on the side is an invitation to put something inside. I smell lighter fluid and burning charcoal. A dog parks. I’m in Whitmore Park now. I’ve heard that this neighbourhood used to be a large slough. It was filled in and houses were built on top. Now those 50-year-old houses need new basements. It’s close to the university, though, and that attracts faculty and students. I walk along Grant Road. It’s been an hour since I stopped for coffee, and I’m starting to stagger under the weight of my pack. My ear worm has changed: now it’s Neil Young’s “Winterlong.” My eyes are burning from sweat and sunscreen. I pass a park without benches. A couple is sitting in the shade in front of their house. Without thinking, I stop, drop my pack on the ground, and sit at the foot of a tree. It’s too hot to walk in the heat of the noon sun. I stretch my Achilles tendon—the source of my plantar fasciitis problem—and rest. After 10 or 15 minutes, I stand up, shoulder my pack, and start walking again. 

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A little girl riding a bike asks what I’m doing. She’s maybe six years old; she’s missing her two front teeth. “I’m out for a walk,” I tell her. I pass another vegetable garden in someone’s front yard. I can hear someone mowing their lawn. My pack feels lighter after my rest, but my plantar fasciitis is still hurting. I pass another abandoned mask. I smell burning charcoal again. I thought I was the only holdout, the only one still using charcoal instead of propane, but clearly I was wrong. The sidewalk ends, and I cross the road. I walk by a huge community garden. I wonder what it’s like gardening there. Two joggers pass, and a pedestrian says hello. I notice that my camera battery is almost dead. A fence is made out of cardboard. Bindweed covers the grass beside the sidewalk with white flowers. I push the beg button and wait to cross Wascana Parkway. Crickets are singing in the research park. I hear a rumble of machinery in the distance. An ambulance passes, siren wailing, on Ring Road. There are benches next to the buildings in the research park, but they aren’t shady, so I keep walking. I cross into the university campus. My friend Gerry, a sculptor, rides by on his bicycle and we say hello. A Brinks truck rumbles by. Two women pass, walking much faster than me. I see a shady bench beside the lake and sit down. It feels good, but I know there are no shady benches near the Bypass, and I realize that if this walk is hard, that one will be even harder.

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A dozen cyclists and pedestrians pass me, and I wonder if the path through the park is too busy to walk on. Which way do I want to go? I can see a gas flare at the refinery from where I’m sitting. The poplar leaves are turning yellow. A duck quacks and a pelican floats in the middle of the lake. Finally, I decide to take the long way home, looping around the big end of Wascana Lake. I shoulder my pack again and start walking. Rubber gloves, shredded by a lawn mower, lie in the grass. I put on more sunscreen. The walk home becomes a long, hot trudge. I pass Lionel Peyachew’s Four Directions sculpture, First Nations University of Canada, and a failed prairie restoration project, all thistles and quack grass and wormwood. I walk alongside Ring Road and cross the bridge over Wascana Creek. I pass the park greenhouses. A bumblebee lands on me, mistaking my sweat for something tasty. I pass the Habitat Conservation Area and Goose Island Overlook (one of this city’s only hills, made of material dredged from Wascana Lake in the 1930s). I pass tiny blue asters growing in the dry grass and the bone of some creature. I pass the busy skate park and the quiet Science Centre. I pass picnicking families. I stop to sit at a picnic table for a while and wonder how much farther I can walk. Then I pick up my pack and carry on.

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A SUV drives past me, leaving an unwelcome ear worm: Billy Joel’s “Uptown Girls.” The number 300 has been repeatedly painted on the path, and I wonder what that means. A crow squawks. I turn north on Broad Street. I smell more charcoal smoke. I see another discarded mask. My camera finally dies. I cut across the park. I pass what used to be Wascana Pool, now a shallow hole in the ground inside a fence. How sad for people who liked swimming outside. I pass the new credit union headquarters. Why is that building in the park, part of the university’s College Avenue campus? Could it be the result of consistent underfunding by the province, which led the university to become a real estate developer? Or because the province doesn’t care about keeping Wascana Park as a park? I turn west on College Avenue, passing a dead squirrel and two seniors who are walking even more slowly than me. I cross Albert Street. I walk past the Unitarian Fellowship and the high-rise apartment building and the lovely gardens and Crescents school, enjoying the shade of the elm trees along the street. And then I’m home. I’ve walked farther than I had anticipated. My plantar fasciitis seems to have subsided. I’m tired but satisfied. 

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Walking with a Goal in Mind

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Christine and I leave the house early and walk down the alley. We’ll accompany each other around the smaller half of Wascana Lake, then I’ll head off somewhere and she will go home. We stop almost immediately: a baby robin has been crushed by a car. I wonder if it’s the one that wouldn’t get out of the way a couple of days ago; I had to reverse back down the alley and drive around the block to get home. Maybe it fell out of the nest before it was able to fly. There’s nothing to be done. Across the alley, a solitary sunflower catches the morning sun.

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My heavy pack feels a little lighter this morning. Am I getting stronger? My camera is swinging around, though, hitting my stomach, and it’s very annoying. The morning is cool—the temperature is autumnal—and we wonder if we should be wearing sweaters. Christine is walking quickly, but she has no pack; I do, and I’m breathing heavily, trying to keep pace with her. She walks down the middle of the empty street, but I’m more cautious, and I stick to the sidewalk. A sprinkler sprays someone’s grass. A homeowner is weeding his tidy lawn. A man is doing something at a little free library, either borrowing a book or leaving one behind. Christine points out the guerrilla garden at the corner of Angus Boulevard; she’s particularly taken by the sculpture that incorporates a teacup. There’s another planting at the end of the block: squash, sunflowers, tomatoes, beans, and a bunch of flowers I don’t recognize. Don’t tell anyone; if the city knew, they would mow it all down.

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A dog barks. We walk out of the shady street into the sun, and a squirrel runs across the road. The beg button at Albert Street works immediately; traffic stops, and we walk across, under the elms and onto the lakeside path. Christine has forgotten her sunglasses. We stop at Samuel Uko’s memorial beside the water. I consider putting down tobacco—there’s some in my pack—but it’s really not my tradition, or his, and I wonder if it would be an insult. What would an Elder tell me to do? I imagine the late Noel Starblanket, who suggested that I should put tobacco in with my seeds when I plant the garden. He would tell me to put the tobacco down, and so I do.

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The willows beside the lake need pruning. Pelicans glide overhead. We walk together on a short cut, over wood chips instead of on the paved footpath. Samuel Uko’s death weighs on me: the racism of the hospital’s response to his crisis, the lack of mental health treatment in this city, in this province. Heads should roll, but I’m sure nothing will happen or change. A family out for a ride parks their bicycles at the overlook and take in the lake. Boaters row past. The wind is getting stronger. There are pelicans floating on the water, and a crow patrols the shore. Gulls cry. I notice fruit on the path, and realize that I’m standing under a crabapple tree. Christine asks why I’m not using my walking poles. Wouldn’t they help with the weight of my pack? Yes, is the answer, they would, but to take notes, I need both hands free. The leaves are already turning yellow. 

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We pass Bar Willow and are followed by the smell of frying onions; the chef is cooking brunch. The parking lot is being resurfaced. A couple sets off from the beach in their canoe; the man, in the stern, is using a kayak paddle. An alert dog and its owner pass by. Geese are floating on the lake in a straight line. A jogger stops and begins making high kicks, like a Rockette. There are more canoeists using kayak paddles; maybe that’s a trend. The water is rough, and the stiff breeze is blowing foam onto the shore. Above, a gull hovers against the wind. 

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A gaggle of geese starts honking—because Christine has gotten too close, I think—and poplar leaves tremble in the wind. The geese have eaten the grass here down to the nub, leaving wormwood plants behind. Flags and paint mark a buried SaskPower cable. Young ducks are eating grain left scattered on the shore. An elderly woman removes her hat and starts running. Two women pass by, walking a smiling dog. The trees here are a mixture of willows and Scots pines. A cyclist passes, going too fast for the busy path. Multi-use pathways require common sense, and there’s a shortage of that. I remember walking on a similar path in Ottawa, and watching pelotons of middle-aged men zip past a young mother who was trying to get her toddler to put his shoes back on. So many men display a thoughtless and selfish refusal to consider the needs of others when they’re cycling, and not only then; rather than recognize where they are, or their responsibilities to the people around them, they retreat into fantasies of riding in the Tour de France. I meet a lot of men like that today.

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Christine turns to follow a desire path to the lake, and I follow, somewhat reluctantly. The footpath is covered in gravel, and I wonder if it’s a desire path after all. Maybe the park authorities respond to unofficial paths by covering them with gravel? A recumbent willow tree leans away from the water. Two kingbirds argue, squeaking and chirping and whining, perhaps because we’re watching them. A crow squawks. The signs that indicate what direction we’re supposed to be walking—a nod to social distancing—have been torn out and left beside the path. Park employees would’ve taken them away if they were no longer needed. Was it the wind, or was it covidiocy? Ducks are swimming close to shore. I notice a memorial to Ross Thatcher, the right-wing politician from the 1960s, that I have never seen before. It’s beside a rosebush. A lost teddy bear lies beside the path. A trio of British sportscar enthusiasts sit on chairs beside their convertibles, parked at the side of the roadway. A cyclist is finishing repairing a blown tire.

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Christine decides to walk to the tipi where Tristan Durocher is on a hunger strike. She wants to show support. So do I, but I’m not sure he needs a big môniyâw hanging around this morning, and I haven’t brought anything tangible: no water, firewood, or tea. I decide to keep walking towards Albert Street. Durocher probably doesn’t need any more empty-handed looky-loos, although I’ve tried to show support in other ways; I sent an e-mail to the province’s minister of rural and remote health, for example, for all the good that will do. This government doesn’t listen once it’s made up its mind. Besides, I find the suicide crisis in the province’s north very upsetting, and Durocher doesn’t need my tears. Later, I read a Facebook post that describes the racist abuse Durocher has been getting, and I realize that I should’ve walked over with Christine. Maybe I’ll take some tea tomorrow. 

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The cycling family passes me again, and I notice that the father is a serious rider: he’s wearing cycling shorts and shoes. We cross Albert Street together. I decide to walk along the creek towards the city’s northwest for a change. I haven’t gone that way in a long time, and I wonder if anything has changed. I hear a siren, and an ambulance passes. The straps on my pack groan and complain. There are dying elms not far away, and I wonder if they have Dutch elm disease, or if they are suffering from root compaction after the heavy equipment built the flood-control berm next to them. Dogs bark behind me. Joggers pass. One woman asks if I’m walking the Trans-Canada Trail. Oh, no, I say, just practicing for a hike. Two women are walking towards me; I hear the words “asymptomatic” and “kids” and wonder if they are talking about the province’s feckless and dangerous back-to-school plan. 

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A row of bur oaks is taller than the last time I walked this way, and a pet store’s logo has been added to a light post. I think about how walking while taking notes is different from the way I used to walk; I’m less likely to drop into a meditative state now, because paying attention tends to keep me focused on the here and now, even when that’s not necessarily fascinating. In The Rings of Saturn, W.G. Sebald shows how walking can enable an interior journey. Paying attention, taking notes, is a different experience. Is the notepad my interlocutor? How much has the way I walk changed since this spring, when I started carrying a pad and a pen? I see bushes covered with red fruit; my friend Kathleen asked if I knew what they are, and I don’t, except that our neighbours had them when I was a kid, and my parents were sure that the fruit was poisonous. Nothing eats them, so that’s a good guess. A fellow passes me and asks, smiling, if I’m practicing. He can see what I’m up to. I’m sweating despite the cool wind, which tugs at my hat. On the other side of Elphinstone Street, where the path becomes a sidewalk on 17th Avenue, a black ’57 Chevy glides past. Someone has written “R.I.P. FIDGET GANG” on a sign warning of thin ice, and I wonder what that’s supposed to mean. 

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I cross the footbridge over Wascana Creek. Weeds are choking the water. I turn onto the gravel footpath beside the creek. Two boys with a net walk past. They don’t answer when I ask what their quarry might be. A mud puddle sits in the usual place. The willows beside the creek provide shade. Dead dogwoods hang over the water. I wonder if they were killed by beavers, girdled during the winter. I sit for a moment on a concrete retaining wall. The purple loosestrife on the edge of the creek is new. A duck swims by. Cyclists pass. I wonder what an unfamiliar shrub might be. Alder? Does that grow here? I think about the walk my friend Hugh is organizing in southwest Saskatchewan, and realize I need time to prepare to teach in September. Could I go for a day or two and then come home? I could use a break, and it would be a tonic to see friends I haven’t seen since the spring, and to see some grassland. But I need to be ahead of things when classes begin, or I’ll be playing catch-up for the entire semester. I stand and walk through the underpass beneath Pasqua Street. The water seems high here, perhaps because of the rain. The underpass beneath Lewvan Drive follows almost immediately, and I can hear the traffic rushing by above me. The Manitoba maples along the creek here are new, as are the weeds on the other side of the path, easily as tall as I am. When I’m in the underpass, the traffic noise disappears—I only hear silence and the wind—but when I emerge, I can hear the cars and trucks again. 

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I walk towards the willows where I once saw a hawk. I think about the pictures my friend Luba posted of a hawk sitting in her backyard in Toronto, and I wonder if the hawk I saw here was a Cooper’s hawk. It’s possible. A cyclist passes wearing a bright red jersey. The weather reminds me of walking this spring: windy and cool. The dog park at 13th Avenue is busy. I climb up onto the flood-control dike—carrying this pack, I feel every incline—and notice that people are letting their dogs swim in the creek. Is that a good idea, with the toxic blue algae that always appears in August, fed by agricultural runoff, in the water? A excavator is piling dirt on the other side of the creek. A gopher whistles. I walk under the bridge across Wascana Creek on 13th Avenue and see a training hauling containers heading west. Then I hear its horn at the level crossing nearby. A strap on my backpack blows in the wind and flicks at my ear. There is fresh graffiti on the train bridge over the creek. No golfers seem to be playing at the Regina Golf Club; maybe it’s too windy. Big signs warn that the course is private, and I remember how, one Christmas, when the creek had frozen solid, Christine and I ignored those signs and wandered around on the course. A man on a park bench is reading, but he’s not chatty, even though (or maybe because) he appears to be reading poetry. Roses have grown through the fence beside the golf course; roses are becoming the floral emblem of this walk. Nearby, honeysuckle climbs that same fence. 

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I cross 11th Avenue into Optimist Park. I’d better hurry through; I don’t belong here. I have a drink of water and hear a train horn sound behind me. I check my phone and learn that I’m halfway to my goal for today—and to lunch—and I’m happy that my foot isn’t hurting. Maybe my plantar fasciitis is getting better. The trunks of the willows along the creek here have been caged with hardware cloth to deter the beavers. A little girl wearing a pink dress and a pink bicycle helmet rides by, following a man I take to be her father, and another kid in pink follows, with a woman not far behind. Another family out for a Sunday ride, then. Tall sunflowers—at least seven or eight feet tall—stand in a garden next to the path. A game of cricket is underway on flat ground beside the creek, a sign of how the city has changed in the 20 years we have lived here. The players even have uniforms—blue, green—and I wonder if this is an organized league. A blue stencil of a Mountie has been sprayed on the path. What’s that about? I sit down to rest again, and I wonder if I can reach my goal, if I can arrive at my destination.

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I text my mother. I’m worried about her; her friend Dorothy is in the hospital and Mom can’t visit her because of restrictions on the number of visitors the hospital allows. I start walking again and pass through the underpass beneath Dewdney Avenue. The wind blows grit off the sidewalk above into my face. I wonder if I’ll see Solomon, my Cree teacher, riding on the path, or maybe walking, given the wind today. I cross the creek on another footbridge and climb onto another flood-control dike. Solomon posts pictures of the animals he sees in his rambles along the creek here—otters, beaver, baby ducks—on Facebook; he’s a gifted wildlife photographer, although I don’t think he would accept that description. I find myself bending under my pack, walking deliberately, focusing on how my body is moving. The wind is getting stronger. I’m approaching McCarthy Boulevard. Should I keep going, or should I take a shortcut up McCarthy? I decide to stay on the path, partly because there’s a chance of running into Solomon. But I’m not lucky today.

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A soccer game is underway on the other side of McCarthy Boulevard. Spirea beside the path is finishing, its blossoms turning brown. I decide to skip a detour onto Prairie and Boreal Islands—I can come back another day to visit them. A kid is watching the soccer game, and a kite is caught in a tree. Sage grows in the grass beside the path. I check my phone again; I’m at 60% of my goal. Maybe I have two hours of walking left? Or would it be three? I’m not moving very quickly. I find a fruit bar in my pocket and eat it. A gaggle of geese blocks the path. Kids are fishing in Wascana Creek. I take a short cut across a lawn covered in dandelions. It’s wet; the sprinklers must’ve been on this morning. The wind pushes me off the path. I follow a desire path to another footbridge over the creek; it’s low here, almost blocked by the weir. The wind snatches at my hat. A buff, tanned jogger passes me. I check my phone; my mother hasn’t replied. I see another row of bur oaks, and a couple carries a bucket to the nearby community garden. I walk by the Paul Dojack Youth Centre, the local reform school, and wonder, again, if it’s true that the Regina Indian Industrial School was its predecessor on this site. When the pandemic allows, I’m going to have to visit the Saskatchewan Archives Board and ask to see old maps of Regina. I drink more water.

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There is a new foot crossing over the Canadian National tracks, complete with signals, so pedestrians are no longer encouraged to take the long and inconvenient detour back to Dorothy Street. I see no trace of the old desire paths where everyone crossed the tracks; they’ve been obliterated by the fast-growing weeds. When I get to the tracks, I smell warm creosote. Another golf course is across the creek; this one is busier. Cheery yellow potentilla shrubs are growing beside an inviting-looking bench; I’m tempted to sit but decide to keep moving. The sky is clouding over. A desire path leads to a housing development on what used to be a barley field; I remember walking there, picking and eating ripe heads of grain. I am becoming a mere stagger, bent double, my two feet (one starting to hurt) moving, one after the other, in a controlled fall. This is my normal situation at this point in a walk.

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I cross an unnamed street. I know that past the condominiums on the right, I will find a bench under some trees where I can rest. I check my phone again; I’m at 70% of my goal. My mother hasn’t texted. Those condos weren’t finished the last time I was here, but now it looks like they are all occupied. Wind chimes on one of the balconies serenades me. I see my bench, underneath some poplars, on the other side of a footbridge across a storm channel, and when I arrive there, I sit to rest. It’s the first time I’ve had my pack off in almost four hours. I sit and feel the cool wind on my back, the warm sun on my face. The wind is a gale now. A little boy cycles past and gravely says hello. After ten minutes or so, I stretch a little, shoulder my pack again, and move on. 

It’s always hard to walk after taking a break, and it takes another kilometre before I’m stepping a little more freely. I cross Sherwood Drive. Yellow toadflax is growing beside the path, along with yellow sweet clover and thistles in seed. I take a photograph of a cell tower. A robin scuttles across the path. He flies away as I fumble for my camera. There are several in the grass, watching us. At 9th Avenue North I press the beg button and wait to cross. The Coopertown development is still a canola field. The sign announcing its imminent construction—it’s been imminent for several years now—has been torn and battered by the wind. It looks forlorn, abandoned. Someone has spray painted a glyph of the planet onto the power poles. At Rink Avenue the footpath ends and I take to the desire path along Courtney Street. This hasn’t changed. Asters, daisies, sow thistle, and gumweed grow along the road. A crow flies overhead. A sign advertises a yard sale. I cross Dalgleish Drive and the desire path hooks right, east of the shallow ditch beside Courtney Street. This hasn’t changed, either. A dog barks at me. I cross the pipeline right-of-way. A circular saw whines behind a fence. The desire path is narrow and deep now, hard to walk on; this is the same as before, too. There’s construction ahead along Courtney Street; perhaps the city is putting in a sidewalk? 

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I turn right on Rochdale Boulevard. My destination is getting closer. My phone tells me I’m 80% there. Another dog barks at me. A weeping birch in the front yard of someone’s house has died. Still another dog starts up. Birds are singing in the trees—chickadees and sparrows—and in the distance I hear a crow. I can only hear them because the wind has dropped for the moment. I cross Rochdale Boulevard. I’m hungry and I’m looking forward to lunch. A gopher sees me, squeals, and dives into its hole in one motion. A kid cycles past, and another follows, screaming “Sydney” loudly; she’s on the verge of tears. An abandoned shopping cart sits next to the sidewalk. A hotrodded Vauxhaul—I didn’t know such a thing existed—roars past. I cross Devonshire Drive. The Vietnamese restaurant where I had planned to eat lunch is closed until four o’clock. I’d forgotten about their Sunday hours; they haven’t changed either.

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I press the beg button at McCarthy Boulevard and wait to cross. My phone tells me I’m at 90% of my goal. There’s another Vietnamese restaurant just ahead; I’m hungry for pho soup, so I stop and eat. Afterwards, I decide to carry on walking. I’m so close to my goal; why stop now? Two kids riding scooters are doing tricks in the traffic, and a discarded mask lies tangled in the Virginia creeper beside the sidewalk. There are more roses here. I call home and arrange to be picked up at the Shopper’s Drug Mart a kilometre or so ahead; that way I have to keep going. A pedestrian approaches, wearing a black mask. I’m limping now, but that’s normal, too. I step over a discarded sweater on the sidewalk. I cross Stockton Street and plod across the Superstore’s parking lot to the bench where I waited for Christine back in April. It’s another six or eight kilometres back home, and if I had more walking in me, I would keep going, but I’m happy with what I’ve accomplished. A young fellow says I look “ready for the mountains,” and I laugh. A crow patrols the parking lot. The wind yanks off my hat and I decide to hold onto it; I don’t need it now. My mother answers my text. It’s been a good day.

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Plantar Fasciitis Walk

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It rained early this morning, and our reward is an Ontario-humid morning. It’s been over a week since I walked with a full pack. Most of the time I’ve been writing, including this morning, and as a result, I’m starting today’s walk in the noon heat. I set off walking down College Avenue towards Albert Street. The mystery novels we put in the nearby little free library are gone. Flowering onions are going to seed. Nearby, someone has planted blanket flower and goldenrod beside the sidewalk; it’s a little garden of native plants on the corner of a lawn. A poster stapled to a tree announces a yard sale this weekend. I wonder if we should have a yard sale; we have lots of stuff to get rid of. I walk past the Crescents School, formerly named after one of the architects of the residential school system, and I think about the province’s terrible plan to return students to classrooms this September: no changes in class size, no PPE, no mandatory masking. How many teachers or parents or grandparents will die because of the government’s negligence? I understand that the government hates the teachers’ union, but enabling Covid-19 outbreaks in schools seems like a drastic response to a bad employer-union relationship.

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I realize that there are many beautiful gardens on this street, and the materialist in me wonders if that’s a phenomenon of disposable income and leisure time, rather than aesthetic choices. Someone has dug out currant bushes along the sidewalk—a thief? A man is writing on an electronic pad; could he be another kindred spirit? A cool wind has started blowing from the north, and the humidity starts to dissipate. I hear a window above me, in a highrise building, slide open or shut. A squirrel buries a nut in the lawn while a crow stands guard. I’ve been stretching to try to make the plantar fasciitis that’s been bothering me go away. I wonder if it’s worked; it’s probably too soon to know. Someone driving the wrong way on the one-way street has knocked over a no-parking sign. 

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I turn north on Albert Street. It hasn’t been a good week. First, I learned that literary journals consider blog posts to be previous publications, which means that if I post something here, a journal will reject it. I had no idea that was the case, and it’s left me wondering about the future of this blog. Should I stop posting? Should I take my writing more seriously and try to publish it? Or are these sketches without interest? Then, I learned that for the second time this summer I didn’t get a teaching job I applied for, despite having taught for that department for almost 20 years, despite having won teaching awards, despite having created new courses when asked to and having taken on courses at short notice. I had imagined I was part of a community, if only on its margins, but I was wrong: I am merely a fungible labour unit, to be used and then disposed of. Now I’ve been disposed of. It stings. But, on the other hand, it’s better to know the truth of my situation, isn’t it? Now I know how that department—how the university as a whole—sees me. And I can make future decisions with that in mind. A man wearing a mask exits a chiropractor’s office, and a woman without one follows. The wind has shifted to the northeast; it’s cooling. My pack keeps pushing me forward, even though I’m trying to stand erect. I run through its contents in my mind, wondering if I’m carrying anything I could leave home. It’s the water that’s so heavy, I realize, and I can’t do without that. 

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I cut across a gas station to Victoria Avenue. Last night, the writers’ group I’m part of met, and I got a lot of questions about who the audience of what I’m writing might be. I’m trying to imagine the Venn diagram of people who might be interested: people who enjoyed W.G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn, on one hand, and people who have read Jim Daschuk’s Clearing the Plains or Harold Johnson’s Two Families on the other. I might be the only inhabitant of the space where those circles overlap. Maybe I’m wasting my time. There’s a new sidewalk on Victoria, and new trees have been planted on the boulevard, part of the city’s beautification project for this street, but that new sidewalk is marked by spray-painted hieroglyphics, and I wonder why. Is the city planning to tear this new sidewalk up again? I cross the street—the sidewalk has been torn up a few blocks ahead—and pass Victoria Park. The elms along the street look healthy, but the spruce trees in behind look terrible, and I wonder if they’ll be cut down. 

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I stop to look at the sign chained to the statue of Sir John A. Macdonald. It acknowledges that, for some people in the community, that statue is a problem. I wonder if it will be removed. It probably should. We need to acknowledge that the Father of Our Country ™ was also engaged in a genocide. That’s the point of Clearing the Plains. It’s time we started paying attention. I turn to keep walking. My shirt is soaked with sweat, and I realize that when the breeze drops, it’s still a hot day. It’s lunch time, and people are enjoying the park and walking down the sidewalk. Two men, moving slowly, look dazed; they are walking like zombies. A woman waiting for them to cross Scarth Street looks angry at them. A coffee shop that was closed during the pandemic is now open, although there aren’t many seats on the patio outside. At one table, a man is talking loudly about psychology; I can’t tell what his point might be. Three men are repointing the brick at the hotel down the street, one on a lift. The condo tower across the street, formerly an office tower, gives them some shade. A deeply tanned man is shading his phone, trying to read it, the way I do. Two painters climb into a van. I press the beg button at the corner of Broad Street and it almost falls onto the sidewalk; nothing seems to be holding it in place.

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West of Broad Street, the city changes: now there are residential buildings and small shops. The beautification project has emphatically ended at Broad Street; a line has been drawn between what matters and what doesn’t. A plywood fence, sheathed in plastic fake brick, is weathering as well as might be expected, and a boxer dog in a window barks aggressively at me. I’m happy there’s a locked door between us. A woman passes eating an ice cream. The Milky Way! That would be a nice place to stop for a minute, I think, and then I realize that they only take cash, and I don’t have any with me. I take a drink of water instead. Zucchini and tomatoes are growing in a front yard, shaded by the street elms. I cross Winnipeg Street. In front of the Milky Way, a woman is swaying on the sidewalk—dancing, maybe, or just trying to remain upright. I can’t tell. An employee stops serving ice cream, comes out, and tells her to move on. The credit union branch next door is permanently closed. An empty lot behind a tall fence is playing host to a forest of five foot tall sow thistle plants, all in seed. 

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The Indian restaurant down the block is closed. A man is using a jackhammer to remove the front steps. Twenty years ago, I was doing the same thing. The heavy concrete steps at our front door had sunk into the ground, and their weight had broken the front foundation wall into pieces. The steps had to be removed so the wall could be stabilized. It took weeks to finish that job. A Purolator truck pulls up against the curb, its breaks squealing, and the driver hops out, wearing a mask, to deliver several packages. The house where a temporary fence used to keep angry dogs off the sidewalk has changed; the fence is gone, and a cat sits on the front steps instead. The whole row of bungalows, though, has for sale signs on the lawns, highlighting the fact that the block has “commercial zoning.” I predict that those bungalows will soon be demolished. Where are people supposed to live—especially people who don’t have much money? Another vacant lot is home to a large billboard. A horn honks. 

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I cross Arcola Avenue. Inside a bus shelter, a torn jacket has been abandoned under an advertisement for high-tech raincoats. There is a long line of clouds in front of me, and I wonder if it’s this morning’s rain leaving, or another storm moving in. I walk past a fire hall, a store selling medical supplies, and a muffler shop. There are no trees here, just six or more lanes of traffic, and it’s hot. I’m hungry—it’s past lunch—and I drink some more water. There are many empty storefronts here, but also new businesses: an African food store, a place that sells South Asian clothes and shoes. I come to a row of dead trees by the sidewalk. They are chokecherries, according to the tag hanging from one of them. Chokecherries are hard to kill, and I wonder what happened. At Park Street, I start walking on the North Service Road. I see my friend Yens, and I wave; he’s standing in front of an empty storefront, and I wonder if he’s renting an office for his campaign. The McDonald’s next door smells like frying fish, but since it’s Friday, that only makes sense.

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The Ring Road offramp that crosses above the service road is thick with traffic. I see a discarded mask in the grass, along with some white asters. I walk beneath the Ring Road. Traffic roars by above. Crickets chirp in unmown weeds, and grasshoppers are jumping on the sidewalk, I realize that even weeds are better, ecologically, than a tidy lawn. The service road is very quiet, but Victoria Avenue East is very busy. Clearly the Bypass hasn’t done much to divert traffic south of the city. I stop for lunch, and afterwards, carry on heading east. It’s windier now, cloudier. There’s trash everywhere outside the Motel 6. I hear a siren behind me. At Fleet Street, the sidewalk ends, and I know I’m getting closer to the edge of the city. A carwash hums. A man scolding a child in his car’s passenger seat veers close to me; he glares at me, as if his driving is my fault. A red, mid-50s Pontiac chugs past. The sign at the Super 8 motel promises “special ratfs.” G. Gordon Liddy slept here?

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A pedestrian approaches. She’s wearing a jacket despite the heat. We recognize each other and say hello. I cross Coleman Crescent and walk across the condemned bridge, living dangerously. Purple loosestrife is growing along Pilot Butte Creek below. Twenty years ago, it was rare to see purple loosestrife here; now that noxious weed is common. A gopher whistles. The service road—at least, I think it’s still the service road—veers away from the highway, and I follow. Sparrows twitter in the trees along the sidewalk. A horn sounds on the highway behind me. The wind has shifted around; it’s coming from the west now. Another pedestrian passes. While I’m waiting to cross Prince of Wales Drive, I stretch the hamstring that’s contributing to my plantar fasciitis. I cross and pass the mosque, a truck stop, and a cluster of hotels. I stumble on the uneven sidewalk. I realize I haven’t been taking pictures, partly because I can’t find a subject in the visual confusion, but I settle for a cell tower against the blue sky.

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I walk past a farm equipment dealer. The road is busier now than it was on my last visit here; that was on a Saturday, during the lockdown, so I’m not surprised. I see the transmission tower marking my destination in the distance. Two Sasktel workers are doing something inside a switching box. My heel is starting to hurt, and I guess at how far I’ve come today; I check my phone, and my guess turns out to be right. So the stretching hasn’t helped—at least, not yet. I listen to the crunch of my boots on the gravel shoulder. My lunch is repeating; I taste pickled. An abandoned Quonset sits behind a locked gate. There’s more purple loosestrife in the ditch, and bolts and flakes of rust on the shoulder. The transmission tower is closer now. The sky has cleared, too. I can hear traffic on the highway behind me. A sign tells me where I am: this is Eastgate Drive, not the service road. When I crossed the condemned bridge, I realize, I travelled from one street to another. So that’s where I am. And then I arrive at Tower Road: my goal. I take off my pack and sit on a concrete barrier that blocks the old exit from Tower Road onto the highway. This spot will be the trailhead for my attempt at walking around the Bypass. Now I know how far it is to walk here. I watch the traffic on the highway. The Bypass is carrying so much less traffic. I take a drink; my water is warm. I stretch my hamstrings again, and I’m surprised to see a wooly caterpillar between my feet.

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Now comes the hard part—walking back. I shoulder my pack and set off, walking into the wind and the sun. Poplar trees beside the campground across the road rustle. I smell cigar smoke—one of the campers, no doubt. Why park an RV beside a highway? What’s the attraction? I don’t get it. Trucks rumble past. Of course, you could just as well ask what the attraction of walking around the edges of a small prairie city might be. Two cyclists—kids, really—ride by. I keep walking. My heel is starting to hurt. The Sasktel workers have finished whatever they were doing and have moved on. Where Eastgate Drive curves away from the highway, I decide to take a shortcut, walking across lawns and parking lots, past motels and restaurants. I spot a desire path next to a billboard—other people walk here!—and keep going. A grove of silver buffaloberry trees is covered in garbage, and magpies rest in their shade. At every step, I set a dozen grasshoppers stirring. I cross Prince of Wales Drive and pass an Indian restaurant I’d never heard of before. I walk back across the condemned bridge. Outside the Giant Tiger store, a woman waits with her purchases in the shade of a single tree for a ride home. At Fleet Street the sidewalk begins again. I’m tired, but I’m not quite ready to stop yet. I check my phone again. How far have I walked? The plantar fasciitis is starting to hurt quite a bit, and my stride is becoming a hobble. I wonder how much more walking I have in me. I walk under the Ring Road again, pass the fishy McDonald’s, and decide to call home for a ride. I cross Victoria Avenue and wait outside a Shopper’s Drug Mart. I’ll have to keep stretching, but I’m happy with what I’ve managed to accomplish today. Perhaps I’ll be able to make it all the way around the Bypass after all.

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