INCHOATE THOUGHTS
February 6, 2010
Hi,
There can scarcely be a better therapy than walking. If I do not
get out on foot regularly into the lean New England countryside despondency
sets in. Even my regular tramp around the Old Reservoir in Lexington serves to
displace one species of melancholy with another less disagreeable.
I cannot claim that I set out on the shortest walk “in the
spirit of undying adventure, never to return,” as Thoreau advises, but I am
always aware that I invariably discover something particular I have previously
not seen. I mean nothing grand, just some hitherto unregarded filament of the
world’s web. Today, as we sauntered round Gardner Hill in Stow, it was a
pileated woodpecker, jabbing at a pine trunk; and a smooth ridge of glistening
ice overhanging a black rushing stream that we passed on the way to the bank of
the Assabet River. The trail was often treacherous, glazed with compacted snow,
so that each footfall required a decision. This lent deliberateness to the
stroll, compelling attention to the green pine sprigs, dry twigs, and cones on
which we trod for traction.
In such circumstances, all the while breathing icy air, the
thought returns that “the worst is not so long as we can say this is the
worst”; and out there, while walking, is never the worst, but among the best we
can hope for. This is colder comfort than Thoreau offers, glorying in an autumn
sunset over marsh and meadow, in concluding his great essay, “Walking” (1862);
but even though uplift often eludes me on the trail, at least to put one foot
before the other in the oncoming twilight is a fundamental reassurance of
continuing existence.
Ever,
Ivan