It’s 6:15 a.m, 61° F with light rain, on a dreary Friday morning.
61° F (!) in August, after several weeks of blistering heat, imagine that. I lift my face to the sky, and let the cool morning breeze and light rain work themselves into my bones.
I cracked open a new book last night, Linn Ullmann’s “Girl, 1983.” Hypnotic scenes drift in and out as I walk.
But sometimes there’s a blessed respite – like a sudden breath of cool wind from an open window…I shook the duvets and smoothed the sheets, tidied the bedside table, opened the window wide and flung the curtains apart. I wanted air and light to stream in to where I lay in the white linen – and sounds that told of a city that was awake. (Linn Ullmann)
It’s been 1,914 consecutive (almost) days on this morning walk at Cove Island Park. Like in a row.
And even though I’ve been walking in this same park, on the same track for 1,914 consecutive days (like 5.25 years now), I’ve stepped foot in the Cove Island Park Wildlife Sanctuary, maybe 10x. This small refuge is less than 1000 feet from where I park my car at the entrance of Cove Island Park.
I don’t stroll. I don’t meander. Or stop to catch-up. Or walk sipping coffee. I don’t sit on park benches contemplating my fate.
Move fast, talk straight, get it done. Next! #BePatient? Ahhhh, no.
Late March. It’s still fresh, oh so very fresh. I’m marching through the Park at 4 a.m., pre-dawn, usual story. Just another morning on the same path I’ve walked a thousand + times. Pitch black.
Kate Fagan: “You just never f****** know what’s going to happen next in this life—okay?
I walk…
These boots are made for walkin’ And that’s just what they’ll do One of these days, these boots are gonna walk all over you (Nancy Sinatra, 1966)
Nope, I didn’t see it. No sixth sense, no gut intuition, no unconscious memory map of treacherous obstacles.
My toecap catches a large rock, and I’m airborne. Yes, in that split second, it was all in slow motion. Instinctively, the body did respond:
Clutch cameras (PROTECT THE GEAR AT ALL COSTS NO MATTER WHAT DAMAGE TO BODY)
WAIT! Wait just one millisecond. I can’t FACE-PLANT. I twist my right shoulder inward to absorb the blow.
4:30 a.m. yesterday morning. Forecast called for 90% to 100% cloud cover, and light rain. Again, damn it. Rinse & Repeat. I stare at the app, irritated. I pay $50 / year for this smartphone app, and it’s consistently wrong. Yet, I pay. And I believe. And I walk. Oh, Lord. Let it be wrong again today. And light rain it did; Rain enough to keep the pesky humans at home. But it let up. And there I am. Alone. Standing on the break wall, with the fog lifting. I snap the shot. I stare at the LCD screen, and I don’t see what I see in front of me. The HuMan tool can’t capture it. Beautiful can’t describe it. Ethereal.
Painter Giorgio Morandi: “One can travel this world and see nothing. To achieve understanding it’s necessary not to see many things, but to look hard at what you do see...Nothing, or almost nothing in this world is truly new, what’s important is the new, different perspective an artist chooses to look at the world.”
It’s been 1,828 consecutive (almost) days on this Cove Island Park walk. Like in a row.
Yes, it’s the same Cove Island Park track. May 5th makes it the 5 year anniversary of this walk.
And, the Magic Show goes on.
Notes: See other photos from Wednesday morning’s walk here.
We feel this restlessness; we lament our shrinking attention spans. But to focus on a relatively narrow question of technical measures of our attention span misses a deeper truth. The restlessness and unease of our times aren’t simply, in my experience, the vertigo of distraction and distractibility. No, that experience is itself a symptom caused by some deeper part of the unsettled self. The endless diversion offered to us in every instant we are within reach of our phones means we never have to do the difficult work of figuring out how to live with our own minds.
For many years I have, like an old man, taken a daily constitutional. I began in my early 20s, when I was a freelance writer, which meant working all day either at home or in coffee shops. I found it useful to go for a walk and clear my head. I’d go even on the bitterest days of a Chicago winter, when the wind slices at your face like a blade. I started doing this before the days of the smartphone and even before the days of podcasts on the iPod. During the walk I would just … think. I’d let my mind wander. Almost without exception, my best thinking happened on these walks. I would come back to my laptop, sometimes almost racing up the steps to my apartment, to get the thoughts down. […]
Daydreaming is a central experience of being alive and also a casualty of the attention age. Years ago, podcasts came to fill my ears during my walks, conditioning me to feel a little panicked without one. But as I’ve spent more time thinking about attention, I’ve begun to force myself to just walk and let myself be with my thoughts. I’ve also developed a set of routines, habits and hobbies that can provide the framework for a form of modified idleness, just enough to focus on to keep myself rooted and present while allowing my mind to wander. Chopping wood, making handmade pasta, going to the dog park with my canine-obsessed 6-year-old — these are all in the happy but endangered category of things to do that are neither work nor looking at my phone. […]
You can’t busy yourself out of boredom or amuse yourself out of it. Neither work nor constant entertainment provides a solution. Not for the king or for us. The problem we face is existential and spiritual, not situational. We cannot escape our own mind; it follows us wherever we go. We can’t outrun the treadmill. Our only hope at peace is to force ourselves to step off whenever we can. To learn again to be still.
Photo from morning walk. 6:55 a.m. 18° F, feels like 0° F, wind gusts up to 30 mph. January 7, 2025. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. See more photos from this walk here.
Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.
