I’ve been trying to restart my aborted ‘go for a walk each day’ habit. I could not say I have been successful: I’ve managed two days in a row, and feel like that’s plenty of walking for the rest of the year.
The walks are lovely despite my quickly fading interest in my physical health. We are having our first ‘real’ snow of the season at the moment: it started falling early this morning before I woke up, and I’d wager it will still be falling when the sun sets in a few hours. It makes the world look strange and freshly-born, and with an accumulation of perhaps 8 centimetres so far it does nothing to make the walk any harder.
World reborn
There is a certain kind of snow which is light and gentle while still being heavy. It is not sleet or hail but rather proper flakes, and the air must be cold enough that it doesn’t immediately melt on contact with the earth. This is the kind of snow that is falling today: it is almost exactly zero degrees celsius, and the snow is sticking around.
The world seems to hush itself when this particular sort of snow falls and starts to accumulate. Sounds are softer in a unique way: I don’t know exactly how the acoustics differ, but it is special and I recognize it. Footsteps crunch in an unusual way as well: not crisply like when a small layer of ice has formed, but certainly in a fashion I am familiar with.
I find these conditions to be uniquely contemplative. If I’m talking I almost feel compelled to do so softly, but mostly I try to remain silent. The trees become oddly ‘soft’ looking with the snow gathering on the branches in three dimensions: not just lying on top as you might expect, but wrapping around in a cushion of white.
More naps please
My walks are not in any way challenging. About a 1 km in around 15 to 20 minutes back and forth on our subdivision road. We live on the side of a small mountain so there is a bit of hill to go up: I climb around 30 metres on the return, about a 6% grade. And I’m usually puffing by the time I get home as I’m in abysmal shape.
I did have a bit of a walking habit during my first six months at our home here, pretty consistently walking five days a week. I even lost a bit of weight in that time, 7 kilograms or so. But I dropped the habit around the time we completed our move in April of 2021 and haven’t really been able to restart it. And the weight I lost came back with friends: I’m up about 15 kilograms from my ‘minimum’ weight in 2021.
The walk is by no means difficult, it is even quite enjoyable some days such as today. But I am an expert at finding excuses to avoid it. A big excuse for avoiding a walk lately is that the effort actually tires me out, and my first desire upon returning home is to have a nice nap.
For a normal person that tiredness would be a strong indicator that I have to do more exercise. For me it is a strong indicator that I want a nap more than I want to walk.
The problem is that you require mental stimulation and you have seen everything to see in your one road subdivision. Exercise just to exercise is for people like us, like reading just to learn something for Maga people – a lot of work for no reward.
I have no suggestions as to how to make your walks more interesting, save perhaps wear a string of cooked porkchops around your neck and look for bears…
That is a good supposition, Chris, but I believe it is incorrect. I have lots of beautiful and new places around here that I could go to for a different walk almost every day. All are within a 10 minute or so drive.
So it isn’t novelty so much as a my incredible ability to avoid activity, or at least that is my theory.
I thought you had a dog as well as all the cats? I’m guessing he or she is too old to do much walking now? Since we got a dog my per diem walking has easily doubled. And she’s a small dog, too.
It’s a bit unfair to compare, though, because I’ve walked a lot most days the whole of my life. Even before the dog it was a rare (Probably rainy) day when I didn’t walk for an hour or so. If I was working it was way more than that. I only work two days a week now but each of those days involves around 6 hours of walking and the rest is standing. And then after work it’s an hour walking the dog before I get to sit down…
On the one walk thing, pre-dog we used to take the same walk every day purely for excercise (in addition to many other walks for pleasure) and we found it fascinating to see the small, incremental changes to the landscape throughout the seasons. It was also very interesting every time one of us spotted something new or unexpected. The same walk every day can be mentally stimulating if you find those kind of things of interest.
Our dog Finn is still quite young- only two years old. I tried using him as my motivation to walk, but found that he is more of a demotivator: generally I find the process of walking a dog to be rather… frustrating? Worrisome? I am always thinking about the struggle with the leash as he is quite a large dog and, despite dozens of hours of training, is not great on the leash. My wife likes him to ‘free range’ unleashed when we walk him together, and I think he is used to that. But I worry too much for off-leash walks, so… it is stressful.
For me, the vast majority of my adult life has been completely sedentary. I worked in IT and spent my leisure time playing computer games and reading. A somewhat fast metabolism and stress kept me fairly slim until my early 40’s, but I’ve been reducing stress levels since that age. Now that I’m retired I’m almost stress-free, and the pounds are starting to stick more readily.
I live in a beautiful area with real seasons, forest, wildlife: always something different to look at even if I walk exactly the same path every day. I don’t think it is boredom that keeps me from walking, but rather my excessively strong avoidance / procrastination abilities. Also, being unfit means that even a light walk ‘hurts’ to some degree, which also acts as a demotivating factor.
Thanks for the good thoughts, though: I suspect this is a battle I will have to struggle with for a while.