POST 33: September 29, 2020
I’m going to brag on myself for a minute and announce that I have walked at least 10,000 steps each of the first few days we’ve been on this road trip, including a whopping 19,419 steps on Sunday.
I know this is exciting but, please, stop the applause and confetti shower and keep reading.
Here’s why, in addition to doing a fair amount of driving, I’ve been walking so much:
Brisk walks are one of the few forms of exercise that I truly enjoy;
Walking is by far the best way to discover the unexpected things that make travel fun and enlightening whle providing insights about the people and places you’re visiting;
I can’t be in our hotel room from 8:30-10:00 AM, 10:15-11:45 AM, or 12:15-1:45 PM, when my travel companion has real-time, online (aka "synchronous") school;
I have to hunt and gather my travel companion’s lunch so that it’s waiting for her at 11:45. Since finding an open restaurant has been difficult, and since our otherwise well-appointed hotel lacks a refrigerator, I have to go farther afield than I might normally have to in order to secure food. (Fortunately, I discovered Sauders Store, a wonderland of delicious food and Jamaican Me Crazy coffee—for the record, rum, pecan, and cinnamon flavors blended into a bracingly rich brew.). Why drive to secure sustenance when you can walk and see the sights along the way ?
To be perfectly clear, urban hiking is where I’m most in my comfort zone. At least, I was pre-COVID, back in those glorious days when a person could, in cities like Boston and New York, ramble from bookstore to coffee shop to historic site to park to bookstore to coffee shop to historic site to park in an endless, happy loop, like a cat chasing its tail.
I also love hiking in the woods, over the grounds, and along the trails at historic properties like Hildene in Vermont or my local favorite, the Crane Estate in Ipswich, Massachusetts; however, unless the weather is under 50 degrees, I’m always concerned about seeing snakes.
I would be lying if I denied that my fear drove our “which path should we take” decision at Hildene on Saturday. I’m ashamed, but, until I seek help for my problem (which will never happen in this lifetime because confronting my fears undoubtedly would involve holding one of those vile creatures), my phobia will dictate many of my interactions with the outdoors.
Besides, here’s the kind of thing that happens when I venture into nature. I’ll put yesterday’s adventure into the form of a word problem, which is the only thing that I may dislike more than snakes:
Q: An arachnophobe and an ophidiophobe rent a kayak in upstate New York. If the arachnophobe sees a spider at the farthest point from the launch location, and the ophidiophobe, in her haste to make sure the arachnophobe doesn’t fly over the side of her kayak as soon as the watercraft touches the mud at the landing site, forgets to put on her shoes before jumping out of her kayak, then slips on the rocks and, in her terror at the thought of seeing a snake, scrambles out of control, cartoon-like, on the slippery rocks and falls waist-deep into the Cayuga-Seneca Canal, how fast did the arachnophobe and the ophidiophobe paddle from the farthest point in their journey back to the launch spot?
A: Fast enough that, the next day, the ophidiophobe’s chest and arm muscles are protesting their overuse.
What lesson did the ophidiophobe learn from this encounter with nature? That, in the future, she’ll stick to the sanitized form of outdoor adventure that she truly enjoys:
Walking 1.6 miles from her house to Spot Pond in Stoneham, MA
Filling out a waiver
Having a teenager push her kayak into the water
Trying to break her own speed record from, say, “Squawking Birds Island” to “That Little Fishing Cove”
Meeting friends for kayaking and gossiping sessions on the pond
Paddling back to the launch dock an hour or two later and having a teenager pull the ophidiophobe’s kayak back up the ramp to safety
Tossing her mandatory life jacket in the “to be washed” bin and her paddle into the “to be cleaned” bucket
Walking merrily back home and anticipating whether she’ll reward herself with a glass of white or a glass of red wine when she gets there.