Walking away

Jul 25, 2024

The man walks twice a day, neatly dressed, with a cane to help him along. He is in long-term recovery from a stroke and I can see this is his physical therapy, his constitutional, his hopefulness. As neighbors, he and I stop to chat sometimes.

He used to sing sea shanties, he told me. I keep meaning to ask if he still sings or if he aims to get back to it. Has he given up singing? I want to sing again. I am thinking about a song called Kern River. I have been singing along to it because writing is hard right now. Singing helps. Finding some song to move me along.

I hope my neighbor gets back to his sea shanties. I must ask him. Anyway, I often look up from my keyboard to see him moving along the path next to my window. I worry about him, admire him, and take inspiration from him. I walk every day too.

Walking turns me to myself. It is, we might say, an inward, but forward-moving activity. I place one foot before the other without conscious effort, adjusting my stride, tilt, and balance to changes in the terrain. I can walk without paying much attention to walking. I can gaze ahead of me without seeing. Or I can choose to see. I am in my body, folded into vision, breathing, and pulse. A rhythm is found in my heartbeat and my thoughts. I make plans while walking, come up with ideas, solve writing problems, and compose sentences. I hold imaginary conversations with people no longer in my life. Walking brings out the buried words, the words left unsaid. How often have I found myself alone on a hillside only to realize that I have been speaking aloud to an absent person, having the last angry word in an ancient argument, or declaring love to a person who slipped into the past long ago?

But walking is outward too. I am in private thoughts, but I share the footpath with others. We brush one another’s sleeves, we create little passing zones on narrow, overgrown paths. There is a language, fixed codes. “Hello. Nice weather. Summer has finally arrived!” I am deep in myself while retaining a thin thread to others. There is that part of me that longs to be in the flow of humanity. The footpath is our river. Our drifting together and apart.

I have loved walking since childhood. I love walking alone and with particular partners. But this summer, perhaps for the first time in my life, walking has become too tangled with sorrow and loss. I set off on one lovely path or another only to find that I am soon engulfed by grief. I choke on tears and must turn my face away from other walkers so as not to be seen. It began with the events I cannot detail again. If you wish to read of them, see my earlier post, Loyalty in Twelve Pieces.

To live with a dog in a given place is to infuse that place with her loving breaths and movements, with her soft gaze and warm coat. When Agnes died in Todmorden, up in Yorkshire, that was it for Todmorden. When I gave up Gladys, here in this Devon town, any remaining feeling for the place drained away. Of course, the place is not at fault. But to borrow from the song, “it is here that I lost my best friend.” I feel Gladys in the house, the town, and on every walk. I will have to go. Where next? I am not sure. But I cannot stay here. This place, however beautiful, will never be home again.