Go For A Walk: This is the Courage Required of Us

These are strange times. What do we make of our sudden and disorienting situations that (in our minds) limit our freedoms and enforce this new idea (to us) of social distancing? I say, and have said for almost all of my life, go for a walk and think it through. When you come home, not only will you have a better perception of your new circumstances but you will be at ease and ready to face the new challenge.

Mill Run, Holtwood, PA

My first think-about-it walk happened when I was only three years old, almost sixty years ago. I remember being suddenly aware of a huge argument between my parents, possibly the first one I had witnessed and was trying to make sense of. Dad had just lost his job with an abrupt closing of his electronics company. We had just moved into a new-built row home in a developing neighborhood on the fringe of Baltimore where his salary was finally able to support not only a new home but the increase of our family. Mom was pregnant with my sister. Both parents were terrified of the future and angry at each other about the situation for which neither one had any warning would happen. I knew this was something I needed to distance myself from because I remember distinctly the feeling of fear welling up in me. So I went for a walk.

Skunk Cabbage, Bynum Run in Bel Air, MD

First, I toddled up a huge hill of fresh-piled dirt to see the progress of the new beltway. Machines moved this way and that, making noise, belching smoke. This was not the place to go, I thought. Then I rolled down the slope (great fun!) and toddled in to town, walking along the brand new sidewalk past brand new shops and a pair of gleaming golden arches which honestly, were a little disturbing. I crossed busy York Road and rambled through a car dealership. I had a sense I knew where I was going and I was beginning to make a turn for home when I noticed my reflection in a shiny new hubcap on a shiny new car. I moved closer then stepped back. My head grew outsized and distorted then shrunk and warped on the mirror-like chrome.  I giggled and laughed and it was so funny I remember huge belly laughs coming from not just me but the police officer behind me.

Bynum Run in Bel Air, MD

I rode in the police cruiser to return to Wilfred Court. I'd walked about two miles so it was a few minutes ride. But coming back was as strange an affair as was the argument that precipitated my walk in the first place.  The once-pleasant officer thrust me into the arms of my father standing on the sidewalk and then the cop turned to my mom and (according to witnesses - I don't remember this part) began to berate her, shouting from the bottom step of the porch what an irresponsible mother she was. My father grew angry at him, put me down, and took a few steps towards him. Then my mother's Irish temper exploded all over the place and the police officer high-tailed it to his car. Neighbors cheered.

Susquehanna River, Holtwood, PA

My parents recovered from their argument. They worked out what to do. My dad told me "We realized we all needed more space." So the house was sold and we moved to a run-down farm in the next county over where I was allowed to wander all I wanted. The door was always open and I always walked through it.  Dad began a new job somewhere far off. My mom knew what to do with her huge vegetable garden. My grandmother knew what to do with an acre of flowerbeds. There was no beltway under construction. No parking lots filled with new cars. No busy roads to cross. But there were the woods and fields and neighboring farms to wander. And, while there were plenty of new and often incredibly sad events to disorient and spin us out of control, those woods and fields and farms became the places where I could go to find perspective and courage.

Sycamore, Holtwood, PA

What Kind of Courage Is Required of Us?

Imagine a person taken out of his room, and without preparation or transition placed on the heights of a great mountain range. He would feel an unparalleled insecurity, and almost annihilating abandonment to the nameless. He would feel he was falling into outer space or shattering into a thousand pieces. What enormous lie would his brain concoct in order to give meaning to this and validate his senses? In such a way do all measures and distances change for the one who realizes his solitude. These changes are often sudden and, as with the person on the mountain peak, bring strange feelings and fantasies that are almost unbearable. But it is necessary for us to experience that too. We must accept our reality in all its immensity. Everything, even the unheard of, must be possible within it. This is, in the end, the only kind of courage that is required of us: the courage to meet the strangest, most awesome and most inexplicable of phenomena.

Ranier Marie Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet , August 12, 1904