The joy of a walk

On Ask Me Anything Day, I got one question, and it came from Martha DeMeo! Her question was: “I do have a question, you seem to walk often, about how many miles do you average a day?”

I think that I average about five miles in a day. I’m trying to improve that, as I adjusted my step goal from 10,000 to 15,000. Lately, however, it’s been very hot so I had to be okay with whatever distance I could walk safely and happily. I know my walking statistics because my phone keeps track of them. It tells me everything, including my average pace, the number of steps, and my mileage. Because I use my phone to count my steps, however, I generally end up with an undercount. Sometimes, I need to charge my phone and any steps taken without the phone being present aren’t counted and, therefore, don’t exist.

I am motivated to continue walking, nut just to build up strength and endurance or to break personal records, but to have an adventure and an experience. Sometimes, I carry my camera with me. Other times, I prefer just to take pictures with my phone. These walking adventures can be quite the suprise at times. Today was one of those days. I was running an errand and had planned a relatively short walk.

It wasn’t long before I noticed a bunch of bees buzzing around some teasel and some thistle. I was very surprised because, a few hours earlier, I had commented on Facebook that I hadn’t seen very many bees this year.

I checked out bees and plants as I walked. This turned walking a familiar route into an adventure. It felt good to open myself up to the possibilities. Here, you can see that the thistle is flowering. This plant is very hardy and will grow just about anywhere. It grows tall with long, sharp thorns (aka self defense devices). When I remove thistle from a garden, I chop the tall, thorny plant down with pruners until I get a stump. Then, I dig it out as best as I can. This is a plant with very long, deep roots, and it is difficult to eradicate.

Today was the first day that I have seen goldenrod blooming. I remember when people believed that goldenrod caused allergic reactions. My mom was one of them. She had a very firm policy that we kids were not permitted to make her sneeze by bringing goldenrod inside. As it turns out, godenrod isn’t an allergen. The culprit is ragweed. It frequently grows in close proximity to goldenrod. It is the ragweed that provokes an allergivc reaction, not the goldenrod.

bumble bee on teasel. This is an interesting plant. Like thistle, teasel also grows everywhere and can be very invasive. It was brought to North America from Europe. The reason it was brought over was that teasel is a good plant for processing wool. Here, however, it is invasive and it tends to take over. And speaking about the wool processing aspect, my friend Lorna MacDonald Czarnota wrote a book called, “Native American & Pioneer Sites of Upstate New York: Westward Trails from Albany to Buffalo.” I provided two illustrations for that book. One was of teasel, and the other was of something called a “Utica crib,” which was a narrow, slatted cage that was used to restrain psychiatric patients.

Speaking of weeds, they can be really photogenic. This one is lovely to look at, but most people find this very annoying. A good wind will carry the seeds of this plant everywhere.

And so, that’s how you fit an adventure and a good step count into an errand that normally would be boring because the route that I take to get to my destination is one that I walk nearly every day. But… the way you keep up the step count and the mileage is by seeing something different every time you take that familiar walk. You never know what you might find. I did see a great blue heron on my walk, but it flew away before I could photograph it.

Happy adventuring! And thank you, Martha, for the question!!