My plan to walk to work was sidetracked this morning by a phone call right after breakfast. There had been a cancellation. Could I come for an MRI this afternoon? (I am supposed to get an MRI every six months to check on the progress, or regress, of a benign tumour situated underneath my brain.) Of course I could.

So, after lunch, I set off on the short walk up Albert Street to the imaging clinic. The sidewalks are covered in ice. Intersections–anywhere the spinning wheels of vehicles have polished the ice into a surface more appropriate for skating than walking–are particularly treacherous. I carefully picked my way over the lumpy ice. I didn’t want to be late, so when the path wasn’t dangerous, I hurried. As usual, I hadn’t quite matched my clothing with the temperature, and by the time I got to the clinic, I was damp with perspiration.

This was my third MRI, and it was like the first two. The machine’s noises reminded me of industrial dance music, although this time it seemed louder than before. It seemed to take forever, but time also seemed to stop. Periodically I would open my eyes and focus on the curved panel inches above my head. Then, suddenly, the test ended. I got dressed and walked home.

Last night, I read Tanis MacDonald’s thoughtful essay, “Falling: A Reckoning,” published in her recent book Straggle: Adventures in Walking While Female. I’m teaching Straggle next week, and I was happy to reread it carefully, thinking about the text through the questions my students might ask about it. In that essay, MacDonald discusses falling in performance art, pratfalls in movies and real life, falls she has taken and witnessed. Falling, she tells us, is a corrective: “remember, nothing belongs to you, not even balance” (174). “What if we acknowledged the presence of ungainliness in the world?” she asks (171). It’s an important question. Perhaps we value grace too highly; perhaps we need to accept our imperfections, our failures, our slips and spills. Perhaps my anxiety about falling on these sidewalks is overblown. Perhaps it’s just my pride, worrying about the humiliation of landing on my ass in front of strangers.

But then I remember friends who have fallen on ice during Saskatchewan winters and ended up broken bones or concussions. It’s not the falling, I realize; it’s the landing, and what the collision of my aging body with ice and concrete might mean. How long would it take to heal after a serious fall? Longer than it would’ve taken decades ago, when my muscles and bones were younger. I think about crutches, physiotherapy, the questions about metal screws and plates inside my body that I answer prior to every MRI test. Nothing, not even balance, might belong to me, but I want to maintain the illusion that it does, at least for a little while longer.

Work Cited

MacDonald, Tanis. Straggle: Adventures in Walking While Female. Wolsak and Wynn, 2022.

We had a mild day last week: slush and puddles everywhere. Then the temperature dropped. Today the high is supposed to be minus 21, with a wind chill making it much colder. But it’s easy to dress for cold temperatures. It’s harder to walk when every horizontal surface is covered with ice. I used to have a pair of slip-on cleats, but they wore out. So this afternoon I walked to work oh-so-carefully, slowly picking my way across the ice. I arrived intact, still vertical, unbroken. I wish the same for every other winter pedestrian. Don’t fall.

It’s another foggy day. Rime frost coats the trees. The park is almost empty; few people are daring the chill. The sky and the ground are the same blue-gray colour. The path is slippery after Saturday’s freezing rain; several times I catch myself before I fall.

I have a lecture to finish writing. I’ve written the others I need for this week. This one is more complicated and I’m not feeling up to the task. Still, I hope to be free of it before I leave here later this afternoon. Wish me luck.

Today’s walking: from the parking lot to my office. From my office to First Nations University of Canada and back again. To the coffee shop. To the place that sells falafel. Then, tonight, after my night class, to the parking lot again. Some four kilometres, if you can believe it. Universities cover a lot of ground, literally and metaphorically. And, today, I have, too.

I walked downtown in the fog late this morning to the optometrist. It wasn’t cold enough for frost to form anywhere. Everything was grey. After my appointment, the fog had lifted. I walked home under the grey sky. It wasn’t much of a walk, I’ll give you that, but I enjoyed being outside. Now I’m back to prepping for lectures–the work I was doing this morning before I left the house–and listening to the news on the radio.

Today’s walk wasn’t much different from the others I’ve made over the last week. The frost disappeared overnight. The sun was screened by a layer of blue-grey cloud. Two squirrels chided me from a branch high above my head. Chickadees sounded their alarms and nuthatches peeped. I stopped to take a photograph of a bur oak, one of my favourite trees. I thought about the day’s work and wondered what the week will bring.

But, for some reason, even though I’ve walked that path beside the lake a thousand times, it felt new this morning. Fresh. As if I’d never seen it before. I can’t explain why. Was it the light, the shadows on the snow, my need for a new prescription in my glasses? (I’m going for an eye examination tomorrow morning.) I have no idea. Something was different, though. I wonder what it was.

Today’s walk: errands. Through slushy streets, along icy sidewalks. To the post office to send packages. To Spafford Books to buy a copy of the second volume of The Literary History of Saskatchewan and to chat with Robin and pet Oxford the dog. Then home.

The frost is gone, melted in the mild temperatures. Nearly zero, just below. The sun is bright and warm. I see a coffee shop and consider stopping for a minute, but it’s closed. Downtown on a Saturday: not much happening. A few people skating on the rink in Victoria Park. A handful of pedestrians. Lots of cars driving past, but nobody stopping. It’s difficult for a small city like this one to keep its downtown alive. The lure of big-box stores and free parking, of Costco and Best Buy–that’s what people want. But I’m not sure this city is trying very hard to bring life downtown. A hockey rink next to the downtown library won’t do the trick. Fewer empty storefronts, more open businesses: that’s more likely to be successful. I’m sure our city council would disagree with me, but I’m just as certain they’d be wrong.

Today’s walk was like yesterday’s–the same frost, thicker if anything, covering the trees; the same ice fog; the same snow squeak-crunching underfoot–but it felt entirely different. What felt monochromatic then was a glorious study in tones of black and white and blue and grey this morning. Why the difference? The landscape was the same; the difference must’ve been in the observer.

I made slow progress, partly because I kept stopping to take photographs, partly because of the ice and snow on the path, partly because a muscle in my back is pinched and complaining. It got colder as I got closer to the university, like yesterday, and the icy fog drifted like smoke in the air.

We haven’t had a week of frost like this since I moved here 25 years ago. We’re so lucky that winter has given us this gift.