Walking

Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings my alarm rings at 7 a.m. I rise, put on sweatpants, warm shirt and tennis shoes and meet my neighbor at the end of our adjoining driveways.  We climb into her vehicle and drive a mile to a walking path that winds behind the middle school and through a wooded and wetland area.  And we walk.
 I hadn't really planned to do this.  I mean, I intended to start getting more exercise, but I was going to join a gym or jump on my treadmill or just walk on the road or (more likely) try something for three days and then quit.  I'm famous for broken resolutions.
It happened like this:  My neighbor called me and said, "Now that you're retired and have a little more time, I wondered if you might occasionally like to go for a walk with me.  There's a nice trail up by the middle school."  It seems that she and another friend of hers had tried this trail, but her friend lives a little further away and couldn't always get here.  I thought about it for a moment and considered how to respond.  Gym, treadmill, walking on the road all flashed through my mind.  What came out of my mouth was "Yes, I'd like that."  About a week later, after a trip out of town, we did our first walk.  We met at 7:30, drove to the middle school and followed the trail to the end and then walked back.  At the end of the mile and a half walk, I was exhausted; she was barely breathing hard. When we got back to her car, I said, "Good walk."
She said, "Maybe we could do this on a regular basis, like Monday,  Wednesday, and Friday."
And again, I said, "Yes."
So we have.  We walk past the backyards of houses by the middle school and notice the large garden in one backyard.  We comment on the for sale sign on one empty lot and wonder what it would be like to live that close to the middle school. We talk about her remodeling project and our respective grandchildren as we crunch through the hickory nuts that have fallen on the paved pathway.  We cross the wooden bridge over the wetlands area and stop to gaze at the ducks.  She tells me she has seen turtles in the pond.  We walk through the wooded area, commenting on colors of leaves and trading recipes.  We curve past the cemetery on the right and the goose pond on the left as we complain about the state of the world and comment on how much things have changed since we were young.  And then we stop at the end of the path and come back.  It's a good walk.  We've been doing this for three weeks and so far, I'm keeping up.  Actually, I'm enjoying it.  Who would have thought?