I Go Out Walking

I am writing this on a Sunday afternoon, ensconced in my most special place, a tiny garage apartment a couple of blocks from the Gulf of Mexico in Galveston, oh Galveston. This is the first trip I’ve taken since May 2022, when I had more money and more help and could more easily leave the ranch menagerie to get away. That time I ran away for two weeks, me and a couple of my many dogs and my little Casita camper, up up into Northern New Mexico to soak in hot springs and breathe the air Georgia O’Keeffe preferred. 

The amount of anxiety I felt leading up to this current 72-hour jaunt was preposterous as I texted and re-texted the team of friends who agreed to hold down the fort. I didn’t just worry about what I was leaving behind, all that could go wrong. Oh, no. My anxiety has a triple black belt so I also fretted about what lay ahead of me, inventing sundry potential disasters, then trying, in my anticipatory fashion, to pre-solve that which hadn’t yet happened and very likely would not. 

Mostly I worried about Milo, one of the three dogs I brought with me. Technically Milo is my psychiatric service dog but ever since he nearly died last year he rarely leaves the ranch. In addition to his sudden onset autoimmune disorder, his hind legs collapsed and it has taken nearly a full year for him to regain enough strength to go on short walks. In my worrying I imagined him falling on a walk on the beach and me having to use his special lifting strap to hoist his hindquarters and limp him home, of failing in this endeavor, of being stranded. 

As it turns out, I don’t recall ever seeing Milo as relaxed as he has been on our little holiday. Maybe it’s because he has a face like a pirate that he loves the seaside. Maybe it’s the salt air. So far we have gone on several walks and though he has to go slowly and stop for gulps of water from the little collapsible bowl I carry for him, he is being a super trouper. Observing his joy I am reminded of Rebound the crazy Boston Terrier who did not live nearly long enough. When I got the diagnosis for the seizures she was suffering—brain tumor—I immediately took her on a road trip to this beloved island I’ve been visiting for thirty years now. I walked her on the beach and we met a gaggle of little girls who, upon hearing of Rebound’s grim prospects, surrounded her and poured on the love.

I don’t think it’s my imagination. I think people smile more readily at the beach. I’m pretty sure I do. Like we’re all part of this very dedicated club and no matter all the many things we might disagree about in this disagreeable world, it's effortless for us to heartily concur that the beach is where it’s at. 

Before lockdown, I traveled with obscene frequency. In January 2020 I was on the beach in La Paz, Mexico, when I vowed to take a trip every single month that year. In February it was to Galveston, to perform the wedding of some beloved friends, just the three of us out on the jetties at sunrise, on February 29th, seagulls circling and screeching overhead right after as we tossed them hunks of celebratory white bread. A few days later I was off to Oregon, Portland and Astoria. I had a trip to Monhegan Island, Maine on the books shortly after that. But once I deplaned in ATX from Oregon, that was it, the world shut down. I have not been on a plane since.

I literally cannot remember how I afforded so many treks over so many years, how I air traffic controlled all of the endless details that must be tended to before I could get up and go. It wasn’t just piles of money I spent, it was endless energy. I’m amazed when I consider how far I got myself and for how long. I’m glad I did, so glad. Nothing has shaped me more than traveling, meeting people, experiencing other cultures, learning how to live on the fly. But these days the mere thought of packing a toiletry bag exhausts me.

***

I am most fond of islands, not only because of all of that water everywhere, but because: perimeter. My anxious mind loves promised containment. I get lost easily. Perhaps my subconscious finds reassurance knowing that, no matter how lost I get on an island, if I keep walking—in any direction—eventually I will find water and then from there I can follow the edges back round to where I belong. (Admittedly I have not once in my life had to attempt this, though I am suddenly remembering that time I got lost hiking across a field of lava on Hawaii’s Big Island which, being a big island, I know, I know—my plan wouldn’t have worked.)

Walking along the edge of the sea this weekend, which I suppose is also walking along the edge of the earth, I was not finding myself in the relaxed state that is more frequently than not my reward for undertaking this activity. I examined my anxiety and had a chat with it. On a very personal level, I understood it was being fed by the death last week of yet another beautiful friend who succumbed to suicide. On a broader, collective level, I reminded myself we all, every single one of us, live in perpetually and extremely anxious times courtesy of the now usual suspects: crazy politics, everything that lockdown wrought, climate change, and a 24 hour news cycle we can’t scrape ourselves away from as we continue to unnecessarily drill into our exhausted minds: We are so fucked, We are so fucked, WE ARE SO FUCKED. 

I don’t actually take comfort knowing everyone else is dealing with some level of anxiety although—out of the other side of my mouth—I do take comfort in knowing I’m not alone. 

These thoughts and so many more unspool and unspool and unspool as my bare feet move along the wet sand, the three dogs tangling their leashes around my legs with excitement, little kids splashing in the waves, wind whipping my braids. Until I begin to focus on the walking itself. And then the walking itself opens the portal to my favorite meta activity: thinking about the magnificence of walking whilst walking.

Just as I used to travel with great frequency, so I used to walk. And walk and walk and walk. This habit began in the early ‘90s when my Parisienne friend began marching me around Town Lake in the name of improving our fitness. It’s true I had agreed to join her once. But she persisted, refusing to take no for an answer, insisting on daily walks, miles long, little Henry in the jogger stroller as we sang to him Alouette  in French. (It’s a pretty creepy song if you care to look up the lyrics. But everything sounds beautiful in French.) 

My friend did this for three months, until I was hooked, and then she bailed. I kept going and going and going, the best addiction I’ve ever fallen to. For many years I walked around that lake, at least four miles each day. When I moved further north and then east, I found other routes. I kept walking.

When I moved out to the country, there was a brief stretch when I walked the country roads around the ranch. More than a few neighbors begged me to stop, though, rightfully worried I’d eventually get run over by one of those muscle cars flying past at meth o’clock, on their way to score. Then there were the loose dogs that charged my leashed dogs. 

Eventually I gave up. I developed full on amnesia around how very much walking is my greatest soother, an activity that prompts far more dopamine hits than completing Amazon purchases ever did. A couple of weeks before this trip, I stared leash walking the dogs to retrain them to mind on a lead. Short fifteen minute strolls through the wildflowers near the tiny chapel. Nothing strenuous. And yet it was enough to start to remind me what this long walking weekend has reinforced:

It is time for me to resume my daily long walks, to never forget again. 

***

Walking on the beach today, I remembered another walk on a day nearly thirty years ago in Austin. I’ll swear it was Mother’s Day. I was pushing Henry, three-ish, in his stroller on the hike and bike trail, which was oddly empty—I saw a sole woman a bit in front of me and no one else. Suddenly a massive wind blew in from nowhere and little peaked whitecaps danced on Town Lake like meringue. I heard a cry for help. I saw on that water a man and a child in one of those little pedal boats you used to be able to rent. They were in distress, about to capsize.

Despite being in my thirties, I hadn’t yet learned to swim. Even if I could, there was no way I could leave my toddler and dive into that water. In the distance I spotted a crowd gathered for some event on Auditorium Shores and raced over. I saw some cops, one dressed like McGruff the crime fighting dog. I blurted out what I’d seen. McGruff pulled off his ginormous mascot head, handed it to me and barked, “Hold this.” I followed the headless furry and his uniformed colleagues running to the shore and I remember thinking it would take them forever to strip down, undo those belts heavy with guns and cuffs, tasers and walk-in talkies. 

But then, there they stood as we reached them, the man and child soaked through but safe on the bank, fished out by a passing stranger who, I can still see him, was dressed in denim top to bottom. I remember having the impression he might have been homeless, but he didn’t stick around to be questioned or commended. He kept going, like saving two lives was just a regular part of his day.

I remember the dad explaining his son had autism, and pointing to stitches he (the son) had gotten the day before after another mishap. I handed McGruff his head back, and extracted from the stroller’s basket a lovely sweater I had just scored from the Lost & Found box at Magnolia Cafe West (RIP), where Henry and I had eaten earlier and where the manager was our good friend and let me go shopping in that box. I wrapped the sweater around the little boy. 

And that was that. The wind died down. Suddenly there were people around again. And I walked on. 

NOTES:

Please don’t kill yourself. I understand from too much experience how devastating depression is. But I’m beseeching you—get help, get through it, live to see another day. The mental health crisis hotline is 988. 

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