“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.” Lao Tzu
It’s only early May, but around our house we are already taking advantage of the longer hours of daylight, especially in the evening. It is beginning to feel like there is almost another day available as the sun lingers in the sky until seven instead of three thirty.
I had read recently about the value of taking a short walk after dinner, that such a walk moves the food along the digestive turnpike and that there will be fewer pileups. So now, when everything is cleaned up in the kitchen, and the leftovers are cordoned off in the frig, my wife and I hit the pavement for a short jaunt around the block, maybe two blocks if we ate too much guacamole.
We have been diligent about this walk after dinner, and we’ve found there is something funny that happens when we take in the details of the neighborhood at the same time every night. For one, we start to notice how our neighborhood operates. One would think that our walk would get boring, that we would yearn for some different scenery, develop a need to see new people and walk elsewhere, break up the rhythm a bit. Instead, we find contentment in a ritual where subtle changes define our short walk – our one square block universe.
Last night as we strolled along, I stopped to peer closely at a shiny iridescent beetle in the gutter that was wiggling on its back. I thought it might need a little help getting going again, so I reached down and turned it over. When it tried to take a step and flipped over on its back again, I figured it was on its last leg and I left it alone. The next night, and the next one after that, we stopped again to check on the beetle, and amazingly, it was still upside down wiggling its crusty legs.
“It’s still moving, hanging in there,” I said. “Man, that’s a long time for a beetle to hold out,” but by the fourth night it had stopped and lay still and stiff.
And yet, this is what our walks are about, noticing what has moved and what hasn’t, who has put out a flag for Veteran’s Day or who is now parking their car on the street even though they have a perfectly good driveway to use. Most of what we notice is superficial, but most of it is reassuring if we are going to be real about this notion of a slow walk. I am comforted, for example, knowing that if someone asked me how long it takes for a beetle to die once it has turned over on its back, I could say with some authority that it takes about four days.
It’s the kind of experience one gets on a leisurely walk, and in fact, my wife and I walk so slowly that we feel our pace might be subconsciously slowing down neighbors who notice us, causing them to yawn, and forget that they still have a good two hours of daylight left. Instead of going outside for a bit, they put on their pajamas and going right to bed.
Out ahead I see a yard where the Wasserman’s have left their hose running. However, at my pace, I don’t feel obligated to tell them water is running down the street into a sewer drain two blocks away or that their water bill will probably be about four thousand dollars next month. I think the Wasserman’s can worry about that next month, not this one, so I’m not in any hurry to tell them what they should be doing with their garden hose. I’ve just spent about twenty-five minutes watching a beetle die, and it’s time to let things go, just walk past their swampy yard that is now a breeding ground for the Nile virus and let the Wasserman’s get into their pj’s, and let the water from their yard find its way back to the Ohio River.
The last two nights, as my wife and I walked listening to our digestive tracts in the background, we decided to take an informal count of the Hosta that are coming up in people’s yards. When I was a kid, nobody grew Hosta, so Hosta are for me are an adult phenomenon. We had pasta back in the day, and the word “lotsa,” but no Hosta. All of the Hosta we observed growing around the block were planted in full sun for some reason even though it clearly states on the label that they like full shade. However, we just count them, we don’t judge the labels and we don’t try to change a Hosta. That is not what a slow walk is for. We know the Hosta we are counting will all look like that dying beetle in about a month – crispy from the intense sun, flipped over and turning a pale anemic yellow.
We were up to around 226 Hosta before we stopped counting and peered into a neighbor’s huge picture window where a big screen TV was playing. In fact, all around us, we could see people’s big screens better than our own screen at home and started planning out which big screen we are going to watch or whether it would be better to move up and down the block and watch a variety of shows. Sometimes, at we stop and watch TV on our walk, the residents will stare at us as if we are the actors on their TV but by then my wife and I have moved on to another big screen a couple houses down.
“You know,” I say to my wife between houses, “I think we should just cancel our cable bill.”
“I know,” she answers, stopping to squint through a window, “Why do we need it when we can watch whatever we want on our walk? Oh look, the Halberson’s are watching Knotting Hill. I love that movie.”
“I’m watching an old episode of Friends over here” I add. It’s the one where Joey and Chandler get mad at each other over nothing and Joey moves out. Remember?”
“I’ve seen that one,” she says, “Let’s see what the Bassett’s have on. I think it’s up two houses.”
My wife and I have talked about what it would be like to ring someone’s doorbell and ask them if they would mind changing their program, say, to that documentary on Disney Omni for Walkers. We try to imagine their reaction when they answer the doorbell, and we make our request for them to switch channels.
“Excuse me. Hi. I’m Jeff and this is Carrie, your neighbors,” we’d say. “We were just out walking like we do every night after dinner, getting the food pushed along y’know, and wondering, since we stop here every night, if we could bring a couple of lawn chairs and sit in your yard and watch your big screen, and if you would mind at about 7:15 or so, changing the channel over to the Disney Omni for Walkers. There’s a special on called ‘Mysteries of the Mesopotamia – The Quest for Alexander.’ Would you mind? We’d just be right out here,” I say pointing out to our lawn chairs.
We try to plan what we are going to say or do if they say no and ask us to get off their property, whether that would be a good time to invite them out for a slow walk to look at beetles and Hosta, but by then we have rounded the corner and are almost home.
It’s taken about an hour and a half to get around the block, and we are now walking so slow that the water that has been running out of the Halberson’s hose for nine hours has caught up with us and is trickling by us in the gutter. It’s dusk and streetlights are coming on, and there in the gutter stream, passing us, is the shiny dead beetle we were watching for three days, upside down. It is passing by us, which makes us wonder whether at our current pace, death is catching up to us, that perhaps the benefits of a slow walk after dinner is not such a healthy idea after all. Perhaps we should just skip the slow walk, stay home after dinner, and let our digestive tracts fend for themselves.
“Shall we head inside?” I say to my wife, letting out a huge yawn.
But she doesn’t hear me. She is watching a gardening special playing across the street on a neighbor’s big screen TV, and the host is interviewing a man who has cultivated a new variety of Hosta that thrive in full sun and grow as big as houses and stay green and vibrant all summer long.