A good walk just might save my life

 

Yesterday, I was so angry at the state of the world -- justifiably, I think -- that I actually thought for a few minutes I was giving myself a heart attack. I wasn't. But the rage I was feeling about everything manifested itself as, well, physical pain.

Since the beginning of August, I have been getting out every day to walk a couple of miles. Before that, I'd gotten very pandemic sedentary: My Apple Health app tells me I averaged 365 steps a day in July. That's bad. So I made a goal of 5,000 steps a day, and I've mostly stuck with it. It is the most consistent exercise I've gotten since 2002. (My body and I don't always have a great relationship. I'm kind of a "stuck in my head" guy.

Anyway, it was raining this morning. I walked anyway. Through the downtown of my suburbanish college town and back, through the park. And I felt something I hadn't felt in months, maybe years: Maybe it was joy? I don't know. It felt good, though.

The state of the world is cause for rage. And sometimes I have to live with that anger. But I am not capable of living with it so acutely. The walk let me listen to music -- I've gotten very deeply into comfort music of late (more on that later) -- but otherwise I wasn't staring at a screen, obsessing about things. I let my mind get to other places. Getting physical activity every day is good in its own right. But the mental health aspect is pretty important too. A good walk just might save my life.

Evening Walk: Venus

Walking in my neighborhood, after dark. It's not lit as well as my old Philadelphia city block — I probably need to buy reflective shoes or something. The app on my phone tells me I have 2,000 steps to go to make my daily goal, so I keep walking, keep walking, keep walking past my house and my path occasionally lit by the occasional street lamp.

Holst's "Venus: Bringer of Peace" is on my headphones. Above, through breaks in the clouds, I can see a star or two — the benefit of reduced light pollution. The darkness and the music go together; I feel like I'm creating or experiencing my own private segment of Walt Disney's "Fantasia" as I move through the neighborhood.

For a moment, the real world and the digital world playing in my head merge. Everything flows.

And then the music ends.

I Miss Sidewalks (And I Don't Want to Die Walking to School)

Ok, I'm going to try to make this the last time I gripe about this, but:

I miss sidewalks.

Some of my Lawrence friends have already heard me opine on this topic, but I'm going to put it on the record: Center City Philadelphia was a wonderful place to be a pedestrian — so wonderful, in fact, that we sold our car soon after moving there, realizing it was a bigger pain in the butt to keep a car there (especially price-wise) than it was to have easy access to wheels. Groceries, libraries, parks, schools, and much more were all within an easy 15-minute walk, and every block was bounded on all four sides by sidewalks.

In Lawrence: There is no sidewalk in front of our house.

Scratch that: There is a sidewalk — but we have to cross the street to get to it. Not a big deal, right?

Except for this: School starts on Wednesday. For us, there are two ways to get T's new school — Ninth Street and Yale Road.

Ninth Street has a sidewalk the whole way, though it's also got decent incline. I'll get my morning exercise.

Yale Road has sidewalks in some places — the same blocks where school is. And almost nowhere else, at least not between the school and our house. The Yale Road side is also where students are released after school, so there's going to be a lot of foot and vehicle traffic on that path in the afternoons.

I realize, writing this, I must sound like a cranky old coot. But lordy: Seems to me that residential neighborhoods around schools should be packed with sidewalks, so that there's never a question of whether an elementary school student — or their family — should decide to walk in the street, and thus in the path of traffic.

Eh — I get it. We chose to live on the slightly more suburban, slightly more cul-de-saccy side of town. This is what you get with it. But there are a lot of kids who live in this neighborhood: They're not all being driven to school, are they?