Doug's Dynamic Drivel

[tag]Jonathon Delacour[/tag] has a wonderful piece today on [tag]walking[/tag]. If you are or have been at some time in your life a long distance walker you’ll have your own reasons for doing so. Some do it for exercise, others to lose weight, others, like Jonathon to take pictures, but as he says:

That my (imagined) motivation for walking differs from Dave’s or Ethan’s matters little. Walking the dog, walking to lose weight, walking to make pictures… ultimately, our walking is a means of — as Herzog puts it — moving through [our] own inner landscapes.

Most of my life I’ve been a serious walker. As a child I used to routinely walk the 5 or 6 mile return trip out to the [tag]Vancouver[/tag] International Airport to watch the planes take off and land or to go sit in the pilots seat of the old battered Spitfire that was sitting outside of one of the hangars. Early on that meant crossing the old railroad bridge in [tag]Marpole[/tag] or going way out of the way to cross the old Fraser Street swing arm bridge if I was on my old single speed bicycle a little later in time. As a child I just had to walk, I was driven by curiosity I suppose and a need to move. I was one of those toddlers whose mother kept on a harness and leash when downtown, and I don’t blame her a bit for it, I would have been gone in flash otherwise.

I used to walk Marine Dr from Main St to Granville, for those who know Vancouver, and parts in between when I was only knee high to a grasshopper. I’d walk over to see my Grandfather and get a nickel from him to go to the local candy store for a bag of goodies.

Later on in my late teens I’d go on some serious walks around town. From Cambie and Marine where I grew up to [tag]Stanley Park[/tag], around the seawall once or twice and then back again. If you know Vancouver you can count that up for yourself – about 100 blocks, probably a bit more, in each direction and then 7 miles for each turn around the [tag]seawall[/tag]. That’s over a 20 mile hike and I did that more than a few times. Basically I’d walk everywhere in Vancouver, side to side and end to end.

I know that for me walking was a way to get away from home where I felt smothered and it was a way for me to prove, whether to myself or others I can not say, that I wasn’t as sick as I was (basically lost my 13th year to hospitals and operations).

At some point I traded the walking in for a bicycle and got to cover more ground but it was always the same motivation – what’s over there? I guess in a way I was making all of Vancouver and environs home (and Vancouver in the 50s, 60s and 70s was nothing like it is today). It was a way of building my own [tag]inner landscape[/tag].

When I moved here I took up hiking again with a vengeance and those of you who have followed this blog in its 5 years of life have seen a lot of the snapshot record I’ve taken of those hikes as I tried to make Rossland and its environs part of my “inner landscape”. I have always felt the most alive, happy and mentally functional when out on a hard hike in the woods , pushing my body to the extreme of its capabilities energy wise.

Somehow over the last few years that urge to walk has faded and I think it’s because in my heart I knew my time in Rossland was coming to an end. What I had grasped here once was no longer within reach and while I lived here bodily I was not, nor could I be, here in my soul anymore. On the trails I no longer felt as if they were mine, that I belonged here, but rather that I was an interloper.

Physically I need to start walking again, I’ve gained unacceptable amounts of weight and my blood pressure, once exceptional is now on the high side and I’m in danger of developing diabetes. Walking will cure all of that I know. But, as Jonathon says, that is not the real reason, that is only the one we tell ourselves. I need to walk because my nature demands it.

Diane and I are looking for a house to buy in Trail which is at a much lower elevation than Rossland and does not get anywhere near as much snow as Rossland does nor does it stick around as long, thus more time to spend outdoors walking. Trail is right on the Columbia River and if, and I’m sure we will, we find the right house at the right price, I will have a new exterior landscape to integrate into my inner landscape and start hiking again as I make it mine.

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