1:45 a.m. - 2005-02-15
A Walk.


I found the Northwest Passage to the office today. It only took me 6 months.

I 'd wanted a more scenic route, or a shorter one, to work. I hadn't tried, for inertia, of ennui, for fear of finding myself walking down a dead end, or even lost--which usually I care very much about.

I awoke this morning with my anxiety missing, and cut across the busy cursive arterial I usually follow, ducked behind a law firm or something like it, and walked west on a street I'd touched just once before.

The noise of the busy boulevarde faded almost immediately, muffled by side streets, condos, townhouses. Upon passing a house with a gorgeous dark red 1948 Buick parked out front, an effusive young tabby cat ran out and greeted me like an old friend. I spent a few minutes of quality time in his company, and it filled me with immoderate happiness. I eventually conceded defeat to responsibility and moved on.

I came next to a school crossing for a high school campus I'd known generally to be there. It was a dull cluster of brick next to the road, with wide green expanses stretching far beyond, sprinkled with trees and silent but for a few birds. Class was mercifully in session. I imagined I might successfully cut across campus and come out somewhat nearer my office on the other side.

Suddenly I caught sight of stone steps several hundred yards away on the other side of the fields. These were large and definite things--intentional and welcoming. There would be public lands up formal steps like these.

I was pleased, and started on the path across.

Halfway across the field I looked south and saw a running track.

It was a pitifully thrilling discovery. I've been wanting to roll out of bed and run these days, these nasty, brutish and short days.

I can't wait to use it. I can't wait to run without traffic and car exhaust, and without bussing 20 minutes to get to the nearest trail. I'm looking forward to running a timed mile.

I finished crossing the field, climbed the immense stone steps and emerged abruptly in another world, on a paved path between two houses in a semi-gated community. It was populated by scarcely embellished mid-century homes combining brick and wood to restrained effect in single-story cottages, and what I imagine to be the first of the American split-levels. The lawns had a shaved look. The few cars on the street were pricy but dull--out of time and place, lacking fins and round headlights. The streets themselves were deserted. It was the kind of neighborhood my mother had driven me to during cookie-selling season. We'd pounded the pavement together so I could raise the money to attend summer camp. My fingers always froze, because it was hard to handle money with mittens on.

I turned south and walked in the general direction of the office, wondering if I were walking on anybody's cookie turf.

If I'd walked the same distance on my usual route I would have been breathing car exhaust by then, and getting honked at for showing a well-turned ankle on the streets like the brazen hussy I am. Instead, I turned a corner and looked at the opera box version of the mountain view from my apartment. Breathtaking.

And in the distance, perhaps still three-quarters of a mile away, I spotted my office, and noted that the street I walked on cut through at the bottom of the hill.

I swanned down the hill and emerged from the enclave. A darling older house perched high on a hill opposite, and realized with some disorientation that I had been able to see straight through the 2nd floor on my toward it because it was devoid of both life and of curtains. A sign said "For Sale By Owner". It was an older house, something from the 30's or 40's, with gables and a porch across the entire front, held up by white two columns. It's probably geologically unsound and due to fall down the hill at any moment, but for a brief moment I allowed myself to fantasize about buying that pretty thing, getting ever closer to the ends of the earth.

Next door, a trail wandered mysteriously down into a gulch thick with trees, accompanied by a stream.

Another day.

I smiled as I walked the last few hundred yards to work in the unseasonal sunshine, feeling just the slightest bit hallucinatory. Walking is more my transportation and exercise than a source of pleasure, but I was having the sort of walk that would fascinate, dare I say arouse a Jane Austen character. The best morning walk in the world. A cat, a classic car, a track, a quiet route to work on which I can parade sleeveless in the summer without comment. A nature trail that goes God knows where.

I let myself into the office and made some coffee.

I wondered if someone there would see me and ask why I had come from the opposite direction, or ask me why I was smiling, but no one did. I was the first one there. So I've had to write it down, then--I have to remember the miniscule steps outside of my uncomfortable comfort zones, the willingness to be lost, the funny little risks. They lead somewhere.

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