D e s e r t E x p o s u r e 
January
2008
Diary of a Streetwalker
Page: 2So it goes the first several weeks of my new regimen, with me making this 15-minute jaunt almost every morning. The top of the hill is great for viewing the sunrise, I find, and on clear days, I think I can see mountains in Mexico in the far, far off distance.
Soon I note that I'm completing my morning trek more quickly. In order to make the walk last the full 15 minutes, I now have to loop back through another neighborhood. I explore streets I've never found a reason to visit before.
Before February is out, I'm extending my walks to a half-hour. I get myself a little journal and start recording my accomplishments. What a great way to start the day!, I think. I swear it even helps me to write better.
Spring
It's time to celebrate. By April, I note that I've lost eight pounds. Eight pounds! I buy a new pair of walking pants — brilliant blue capris — to celebrate my new waistline, plus two new T-shirts for springtime layering. I realize I've been neglecting my mileage log journal, and switch to an online system. I can record everything I eat, how far I walk, and it tells me how many calories I've burned. It tracks my Body Mass Index, or BMI, calculating how much of my flab I'm losing and how much muscle mass I'm building. Muscle weighs more than fat, I learn, so I shouldn't be discouraged if I don't lose weight — rely on the tape measure and how my clothes are fitting.
| You'll Never Walk Alone . . . unless you want to, that is. Here's how to hook up with pedestrian partners and support. I tend to prefer solo walks. I like the quiet time and the flexibility to walk as far as and wherever I want, when I want. For those who wish, though, there are several ways to hook up and walk with others in the area. In the Las Cruces area, for instance, there is the Sun Country Striders Volksmarch club (see Desert Exposure, October 2006.) Volksmarching (from the German Volksmarsch, meaning "peoples' march") is a form of non-competitive fitness walking that developed in Europe. Participants typically walk 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) on an outdoor path. Volksmarch associations offer incentive awards (usually pins and patches) for completing themed courses of events. Volkssport participants enjoy recording distances and event participation in international record books. Anyone can go to the Volksmarch "starting point" — last time I checked, it was Coas Bookstore in downtown Las Cruces — and walk the courses for free, or pay a small fee to get credit toward a walking goal. In Grant and Hidalgo County, we have Active and Alive, a diabetes prevention and control program that is a collaborative effort of the Department of Health, Southwest Outreach for Diabetes, Gila Regional Medical Center and HMS' LaVida program. For the walking program, participants show up at a designated time and location, divide into groups and walk at their own pace. Melvyn Gelb, a diabetes public health nurse with the health department, says the program now operates in Silver City, Lordsburg, Bayard and Mimbres, and hopes to start up in Santa Clara this winter. "It's been really well received," Gelb says of the program. "People like the social aspect, meeting up with others. They like having a safe place to walk. And with walking, there's no equipment or gym membership required." Local focus groups revealed that these were aspects important to community members looking to walk for their health, he says. "Have you seen our great brochure?" Gelb asks enthusiastically. "Great Places to Walk in Grant County," a flyer produced by the Department of Health, in cooperation with several other entities, lists 18 simple walks in Grant County, and rates them by challenge, wheelchair or stroller accessibility, amount of incline and whether dogs are allowed. Included on the list are Boston Hill trails, trails at historic Fort Bayard, local school tracks, the "Sidewalk Solar System" walk on Swan Street in Silver City, and even a quarter-mile walk inside the local Wal-Mart — providing cover on inclement days, if sorely lacking in scenery. "Oh, you're doing exactly the right thing," Gelb says when I mention my family tree and the health improvements I attribute to my walking regimen. He quotes a recent study that found regular mild exercise had the best impact in preventing diabetes and even improved the health of people who already were diabetics when they entered the study. "Keep it up!" he says. "It's the
best thing you can do!" |
I also buy a really cool lightweight pouch in which I stick a small notebook and cute, pink micro-sized pen. I find that some interesting thoughts come to me while I'm out there walking in my own little solitude. I also can throw my driver's license and a little emergency money into the pouch. I plan to be straying farther from home — truth be told, I am a bit tired of walking my neighborhood loops and hills.
By now, I've explored a bit of Boston Hill at the southwest corner of town, gone out on a newly opened forest service trail, and discovered the Sidewalk Solar System walk (see the June 2007 Desert Exposure). On Swan Street, just blocks from my house, the Sidewalk Solar System provides a gently rolling one-mile walk to the Silver High School track. Images depicting the sun and each planet — along with name, size in comparison to Earth and distance from the sun — are set into bronze plaques embedded into the sidewalk at carefully measured intervals. It's built on a mind-boggling scale of 3-billion-to-1, so each step the average human takes represents more than 1 million miles. Walking at a normal pace between the markers for the planets, you're imaginatively covering a million miles, traveling around 10 times the speed of light as though hitching a ride on the Starship Enterprise.
I like to take this walk among the stars and planets first thing in the morning or between writing pieces.
But though the solar system walk is up on the sidewalk and presumably safe, it's not an opportunity to let your mind go completely blank and put the Enterprise on cruise control. This, in fact, is where I am actually struck by a car one fine spring morning.
Having walked from the solar system to the track and completed a few laps around, I am heading back down Swan Street toward home. It's balmy, bordering on summer weather, and still early morning. I am thinking of the piece I am going to write today, outlining my thoughts in my head.
Other good people of the world are heading out to work. I note that there's more traffic on Swan Street than I remember, and an awful lot of people backed up from the point of that awkward little All-Way stop sign. Some folks sit in their driveways and side streets, waiting for their chance to pull out into the pulsing throng.
A lady in a big car — I'm not good at identifying models — decides to take her shot. More concerned with backing out of her driveway and into the street than, say, watching for defenseless sidewalk pedestrians obeying all the rules of traffic, she suddenly lurches toward Swan — and right into my thigh! OK, that smarts!
Fortunately, she's not going that fast. Instinctively, I smack both my hands on her trunk — hard! — to alert her to my presence. She stops short and I see her look up into her rearview mirror, a startled expression coming over her face as I register on her retinas. No, oddly, behind her was one place she hadn't been looking while backing out.
I leap aside and she turns around in her seat to face me, her expression now truly annoyed. She gives me an urgent hand gesture, which I'll charitably translate here as "What are you doing behind my car?," then quickly whips out into the street and hauls ass around a corner.
Albert Einstein is quoted as saying that the most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or hostile universe. I'm on the side of friendly. I just don't think this is a mean, scary world filled with disappointments, danger and obstacles, and I try to believe the best about others.
I don't believe that woman who left a football-sized bruise on my thigh even knew she hit me. My appearance in her rearview mirror — surely "out of nowhere," in her perception — was startling, unnerving, perhaps even frightening.
Let me say it right here, right now: Lady, I forgive you. And I'm also damned glad that at least one of us was aware of the proximity of my mortal form to your bumper.
Summer
At a doctor's appointment, I make a happy discovery: I've lost five more pounds! I'm even more startled to learn that my blood-pressure reading has dropped to 108/62 — the lowest it's been in years. A few weeks later, while at a local health fair, I decide to visit the blood-sugar screening booth. My reading comes up normal — not the "high normal" I've seen crop up on and off for years, but normal normal.
By now, it's about time for a new pair of sneakers, believe it or not. With the warmer temps, I also buy a wicking, breathing, miracle-fabric tank top. Looks sharp, too, on my increasingly fit frame. I even find the Holy Grail of sports bras.
With so much of my skin now exposed to the summer sky, I think more seriously about sunscreen. I wear a foundation make-up with SPF-30 on my face year round, and the rest of me usually is covered. But to protect my now-often-bare shoulders and arms, I get a spray-on sunscreen product that enables me to reach my back, all by myself.
I've also been wearing an old fanny pack that holds a water bottle all this time. Gets the job done, but it's clunky, bigger than I need or want. After shopping around and trying on model after model, I find the perfect, sleek, smart little water bottle holster with style. It's even got a pocket, into which I can slip a meal bar and carbohydrate shooter, in case I walk so far I run too low on fuel.
By now I'm up to walking an hour at a clip, and a pretty good clip, at that! Trails out at scenic Bear Mountain Lodge, trips up to the university and back through town — I vary my route, meander and add on loops, making sure I keep out for my hour. It's my "constitutional" now, and I wouldn't miss it.
I don't even keep up with my online calculator — how I feel is the only barometer I need.
I've clocked the trip from my house up to La Capilla — Silver City's little historic-recreation church on the hill — and back home, and am happy to find I'm getting in five miles with that walk. On my way back, I like to take a detour into one of the downtown bike shops or pick up a few groceries or a post-walk treat for myself at the food co-op.