Walking to Work

On Monday my car needed to go to the shop, and it was a nice day, so I decided I'd walk to work. I've been meaning to do this ever since relocating to Clifton Road last summer. There's not room for all the cars on campus, so we've been encouraged to ride the bus or carpool or walk or ride a bike. I thought it would take about 45 minutes, if I maintained a decent pace. So on Monday morning I headed off on Cumberland, towards North Highland. Smiles and hellos from other pedestrians, some of whom were people I knew or people I'd seen around and others complete strangers. A co-worker on Cumberland who looked incredulous and asked me if I was walking to work. Did I need a ride? No, I'm going to walk, I told her. I've been meaning to do this forever, and I'm doing it today.

I have no idea how many times I've driven this route, but I'd never paid much attention to the contours of the land, when I was in my car. (Except of course for the hill on Clifton Road, where I always seem to get behind a bus.) Walking, you notice the uphill and downhill parts. Several of the downhill parts take you to the South Fork of Peachtree Creek. And then it's back uphill.

And there was more. There are cherry trees in bloom on Reeder. At Cumberland and North Highland, the cluster of middle school kids waiting for the school bus, and the one small boy, 30 feet back, keeping his distance from the other kids. The sections of sidewalk on Johnson Road near Meadowdale that have bits of colored glass embedded in the concrete. (On the way home I learned that they reflect the late afternoon sun so intensely that from a distance those sections of sidewalk look like they are wet.) There is a painted metal pink flamingo in someone's yard on Highland that I'd never noticed before, and wisteria in bloom along Clifton Road. And there was a dead bird -- a red male cardinal -- lying on the sidewalk on Clifton.

Walking home Monday afternoon on the last day of winter, the temperature was in the 80s and I wished I had a water bottle with me. But I'd felt strangely energized at work and I slept better than I usually do that night. Yesterday, I walked again, this time with a water bottle. I saw the same small boy keeping his distance from the other kids at the bus stop. On Cumberland Road late yesterday afternoon I said hello to the co-worker who had offered me the ride Monday morning. She seemed aghast. "Are you going to do this every day?" I don't know, I told her, but I did it today.

Tom has been taking meditation classes at the Tibetan Buddhist monastery and as a result we've had some conversations at our house about mindfulness. The National Institutes of Health promotes mindfulness as a stress-reduction strategy. There was an article in the New York Times last month about "mindful eating" as a way to address our bad habit of eating bad food whether we're hungry or not. Today I listened for the birds and noticed that the pink dogwoods on Johnson Road that had not been in bloom on Monday were today. It's not just that it's easier to be mindful when walking than when driving; there are more interesting things to be mindful about.

Today, as I was walking up that long hill on Clifton Road, I saw again the same large man who had jogged slowly past me, downhill, on Monday. This morning, I smiled and said hello. He smiled back.