The Weather Forecast
When I lived in New York City, I loved to walk, though of course, compulsory walking is rarely as routinely pleasurable as elective strolls. The city always felt infinite, and even when it became somewhere I couldn’t live, the ability to walk anywhere, everywhere whenever the mood struck felt like freedom. When I wasn’t running late, which was less and less often the longer I lived there, I would walk distances that were easily traversed by the subway as a matter of course. Good weather always ruled this habit, of course.
I didn’t go out much here in the woods before all this began, and I didn’t think of it much. I left New York and worried that I would be lonely in a place where I had no local company. Instead, my life grew a manageable, much-needed predictable quiet that let me hear myself think for the first time in a long while. It turned out it wasn’t quite the thrill of travel that ways so conducive to thoughtfulness, which is what I had thought for a long time. It was being gifted predictable, silent time and a span of my own company.
Very soon after we moved, we adopted a very energetic hound that needed 2-3 miles of walking to settle down and allow me to work. He joined the family a few days before Christmas, and so the first months of dog ownership were specifically about bad weather, donning layers in the dark and taking laps and sips of coffee from a thermos and ice-sheeted riversides. It was terrible to do it, but being outside was good for me. I still went days without seeing anyone other than my partner.
It was not that I was not ever lonely, but that socializing was not available without a bit of planning. I texted friends and I drove myself down to Boston every few weeks, a weekly visit to my parents’ house an hour away, the occasional dinner or drink out with my partner. We liked to bowl in the winter when it was too cold to go for walks.
Walking is my primary recreation, and certainly aside from a once robust but now spotty yoga practice. In the fall, I happily layer up, crunching ice in favorite boots in the winter. I live for the emergence of mushrooms and blooms in the spring. And in summer, with a sun hat and not much else, I spend whole days just walking, gardening, walking again.
It has always been something that my partner and I loved to do together, walking in relative silence, pointing at birds. We like to hike too, lightly, but mostly prefer long, long walks in the woods, goal-less and wandering, just breathing. This has been true since we were car-less teens traipsing through our beach town, finding pockets of woods with nothing to do and nothing particularly sinister in mind. I walked it through cities and woods on other continents, with other people and alone, but even after a decade, I look forward to the weekend and sharing rather than splitting the dog walk with him.
We had moved where there were fewer people not in a small part because there were more trees. What I did not think much about until I arrived is there are no sidewalks to walk here, just a verge that ends in winter road sand and then an abrupt line of asphalt. There are trees, but most of those trees belong to someone, or to each other, with no path around or through. Fens dominate large stretches, uncrossable reedy river basins that can house neither homes nor roads. Any park with a trail through it must be driven to.
There is one park just a road or two from home, though not a safe walk. It is a smidge of hilly trails from which you can almost always hear the road, plus a lake that’s more of a pond, ringed with small homes and a grassy shore in the park dotted with ambitious if not successful fishermen. It is technically not open yet, only open for boats and swimmers June through September. The moment the snow melts I am there, 7:30 am walks with frozen fingers. Dogs are not allowed once the park opens. Until then, it was an oasis, too small to draw attention, just big enough to roam. I walk there several times a week until the snow drives me out again.
It’s April, and the park is filled any sunny day. We are all just trying to get through, we are all just trying to sun ourselves, we are all trying to stay safe. I wore my mask to the woods and felt foolish. Parks and trees that belong to all of us, and I am just somehow so desperate still for the familiar kind of loneliness, where I pick and chose when I see others. Where the park is empty on a Tuesday morning because everyone else has somewhere more important to be.
And I am guilty of wishing for other kinds of distance than the kind we owe each other right now, where we all stay home so we can each get a small slice that is safer because of that love. My slice is so much larger and requires so much less of me than most people I know. My head is full of impulsive feelings that my more thoughtful and empathetic self does not approve of. My mood is terrible if I stay in, it was always low when it rains. Every spring of my life I have prayed for a little more sun each day.
This month when it rains, I rejoice because it means the park will be empty enough for me to coo at the creek. I don my anorak happily, pull on my boots, and splash. When it is cold out, I linger in the forest. And when the sun arrives, I negotiate timings and location, mask-wearing and extra thoughtfulness. It is good, and it is social, and it is even loving, but it is not just me and the trees. It is me and the trees and the world and all of us together, trying to keep our distance but feed our hearts. We’ll do this for months, and it will only work as long as we’re willing to stay in until we’re bursting, share the sun we usually hoard, be frugal with the gentle forecast.