So, the piece I had planned to post here this month—about my job working at the Band Box diner in Minneapolis—might get published by a local paper there, so while I wait on their reply, let me return to one of my favorite topics: walking.
I write about my walks frequently. This year, I’ve added a new twist. Winter walking. My weird neurological condition hasn’t gotten any better, but hasn’t gotten any worse. I’ve decided to be a little more proactive, and to exercise more.
My problem during these winter walks lies with Cheyenne Mountain, the home of NORAD and monstrously large symbol of the Cold War, looming over me from the West, ten miles away as the crow flies. It blocks out the sun in the late afternoon.
On days where it’s snowy, or below freezing, it doesn’t matter, I don’t walk, but instead make do with weightlifting. Please don’t entertain the image of me lifting a large cartoonish barbell, or bench-pressing on some machine with pulleys and cables. I’m using cheap, goofy five pound weights and an exercise regimen I found on the internet. It bores me. I’ve tried having the radio on, and the TV. It doesn’t help. Exercising makes me tense and bored and oddly anxious. Back in my corporate days, I belonged to a health club, and I felt that exact same low-level bored anxiousness.
I don’t feel it when I’m walking. Why? Because I can look at stuff. Because I can people-watch, pet-watch, bird-watch, bug-watch, cloud-watch, tree-watch. Because I’m in motion, even though that motion is on a circular path.
The difference this year is that I’m doing my walking in the winter, as long as it’s above 40 degrees and not raining or snowing. I’ve had to abandon my uniform of tee shirt, cargo shorts, and sandals. They’ve been replaced by jeans, that same tee shirt, a sweater, and a hoodie. My Mets hat has been replaced by a stocking cap. I almost always still wear sandals, as I hate having my feet encumbered. But I add white socks to the mix, cementing my place as a typical middle-aged, Bad Fashion Dad. When the temperature drops into the low 40s, I’ll switch out the sandals for actual shoes. But I’ll resent it.
Pre-solstice (and pre-end of Daylight Savings Time), I can take my walk after writing, around 4, as an end to the day, before my wife came home from work. But once the end of Daylight Savings Time hits, those afternoon shadows drop down like a wall of cold, as the sun dips behind Cheyenne Mountain. At its nadir, the sun will dip behind the mountains at 3:45, and it gets cold. You can actually feel the chill in the air hit you as the shadow of the mountain falls.
Back in November, right after the change, I was walking in a nearby park with a large grassy area at its center, timing my walk so I could watch the shadow of the mountain cross the grass, like that incredibly silly scene in The Day After Tomorrow where the fingers of cold is spreading across Grand Central Station.
It doesn’t spread like a sharply-defined shadow; rather, a gradient stretches across grass, darkest at the spot closest to the mountains, lightest at the opposite side. The darkening takes less than a minute, and then BOOM, it’s cold!
So, I try to take my walk in mid-afternoon, even though it breaks up my writing day. As I meander along suburban streets, I watch the sun drop down toward the ominous bristling antennas of Cheyenne Mountain. I try to time things so that I am headed home by the time the shadow of the mountain drops over the streets.
It’s tempting to turn the shadow of Cheyenne Mountain into a sinister symbol of something or other, but the Cold War is over, and the list of possible threats to our national life is much longer. I suppose Russia is still a menace, but the idea of NORAD seems almost quaint.
Rather than wrestle with the symbol, I let Cheyenne Mountain simply be what it is: a wall of stone that is positioned between me and the light I desire. I adjust my schedule to allow the sunlight to reach my skin, take my walk, and return to our home, the inside air now uncomfortably warm against my body. I shed a few layers of clothes, pet the cats, sit back down at the kitchen table, and return to the blank pages I am slowly filling with words.
Peace.
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