Walking

I've been walking.

January and February are hard months for me. It took at least a decade for me to figure this out, because the data points only come around once a year, so it's hard to collect enough of them to recognize a pattern.

I have enough data now. A ball drops every New Year's Eve: my adjunct academic contracts are expectedly sparser, the urgency to make pots for holiday sales dissipates, my porch studio is too cold to work in, the weather is bleak, days are short, and nights are long. I should fill this time by upping my pottery production--or finally building an all-season studio. Instead, I only get the work done that absolutely must get done. I procrastinate. I surf. I waste a dreadful amount of time not doing much, feeling bad about it, and then doing the same thing over again the next day, for no apparent reason other than that this is what I always do in January and February.

So I've been walking.

An hour before sunset on January 21st, after avoiding work all day, I thought that perhaps going outside and putting one foot in front of the other for an hour might count as doing something, even if it wasn't making pots or prepping for the next day's writing workshop. Ten minutes later, I walked out the door and headed north on the greenway. Away from my computer, my brain finally focused on workshop plans, which I dictated into my cell phone. After a few miles of this, as the last of the sun's rays faded from the sky, I paused on the quiet wooded path to photograph the out-of-place yellow-orange glow of a nearby energy distribution substation. When I reached the north end of the greenway, I considered that I could walk all the way to Eno River State Park, but it would be too dark to hike once I got there. I turned left to loop back home. By the time I got back, I had walked eleven miles, six of them in the dark.

Really? I can't spend the night here? Duke Energy distribution substation butts up against tree-lined trail. 

The next day, I spent 3.5 hours on Zoom talking about science writing with postdocs in upstate New York. That afternoon, I walked another eleven miles. In theory, I had set off to buy bread at a bakery a few miles away, to give my walk a purpose. In practice, I came home breadless, because walking was purpose enough.

You can't see hand-painted NCSU garden gnomes from a car.

This is what I had been looking for; you can find it in unexpected places if you travel by foot.

On the third day, I made walking a personal goal. I made up some rules:

1. No travelling by car in February (exceptions allowed for medical appointments, emergencies, and moving my kid out of his dorm if the university shut down student housing again due to covid).

2. Walk a lot. (What's "a lot"? Walking places I'd usually drive? Every day? Most days? I'm still figuring it out.)

3. Walk to prepare to walk more. 

I've been talking for years about wanting to do a long-distance hike once the kid is comfortably ensconced in college. He's now thoroughly ensconced, and the trails aren't going to hike themselves. 

So I walked. I've long been a destination-focused walker (walk to work, walk to the store). For five and a half weeks, I became a walking-focused walker. I walked enough to feel like I was actually getting somewhere, despite ending up back at home every time. I learned a lot.

I drove three times in February:

(1) I had a doctor's appointment on February 2. I drove because it was allowed under Rule 1, and because walking 16 miles roundtrip seemed like more than I really had time for. The appointment ended with an unexpected biopsy, so after driving home, I spent most of the afternoon Googling all the things that could potentially be wrong with me, instead of working. That was still a better use of my time than walking eight miles home with a leaky wound.

(2) On February 26, S and I each drove one of our two cars out of the driveway and parked them on the street, so we could transfer a firewood delivery from the street to our woodpile.

(3) Also on February 26, after we moved the wood, I drove both cars back into the driveway. 

Everywhere else I went, I went on foot.

Before the no-driving rule kicked in, S dropped me off
at the southern end of the American Tobacco Trail,
and I walked the 24 miles home. 01.30.2021

I'm privileged to be able to spend this much time walking (as well as, I suppose, to spend two months submerged in seasonal depression, frittering entire days away between brief spurts of required productivity). For better (usually) or for worse (sometimes), I am mostly my own boss; my early-year work load is light; I no longer have a kid at home who needs daily attention; and (for better, definitely) I have a spouse who works full time and through whose job I receive healthcare benefits. I also recognize that I can walk through most neighborhoods in town without anyone judging whether or not I belong there--or at least without anyone acting on that judgment.

So I walked. The no-driving rule meant staying relatively close to home. My longest loop was just under 13 miles, which got me about 5 miles from home as the crow flies and included an almost 2-mile stretch through West Point on the Eno City Park.

January 21-February 28: 261 miles, 35 walks.
Shortest walk: 1 mile loop; longest walk 24 miles one-way.

Things I learned:

1. Walking is better than not walking.

The sidewalks bordering NCCU are stenciled with
walk-related encouragement. Eat smart.

Be active.

North of NCCU, words yield to symbols. Keep walking.

Downtown stencil. A friend and I donned masks
to walk and talk.

2. Walking shrinks distances. It might take longer to get somewhere on foot than by car, but the fact that I can get there on foot makes the destination seem closer. Walking changes the meaning of "within walking distance."

A short destination-focused walk quadrupled into
a walking-focused walk. 02.19.2021.

3. Walking is the best way to understand the twists, turns, meetings, partings, and rejoinings of roads and trails. I grew up in a part of the Midwest where streets are laid out in cardinal directions--where you can measure miles by counting crossroads and navigate by looking for grain silos poking up in the distance above the corn and soybeans. Decades later, roads that curve still throw me for a loop. Walking makes the curves make sense.

Curvy roads make it harder to tell what direction
I'm headed, but easier to draw pictures. 2.27.2021

4. Walking amplifies local history. From historical markers, to cemeteries, to local landmarks, to murals, to historic districts, to schools and parks and museums and even to Little Free Libraries, walking helps you see connections between people and places in ways that driving does not. 

Pauli Murray mural on Foster Street

Pauli Murray mural on Buchanan.

Pauli Murray mural at Carroll & Chapel Hill. 

The Pauli Murray Center for History and Social Justice,
906 Carroll Street.

The Durham Civil Rights Mural, located behind the
Durham Arts Council, is a local history lesson in pictures.

In Plain Sight, a temporary historical exhibit in
Geer Cemetery, runs through March 7. 

This little free library on Geer St. encourages
walkers to educate themselves. See the links
at the end of this post for more info. (1)

See links below (2)

See links below (3)

See links below (4)

Durham Hebrew Cemetery, adjacent to the southeast corner of Maple View Cemetery, dates back to the 1800s.

5. Walking teaches you where sidewalks are, where they aren't, and where they clearly should be, judging by the paths pedestrians have trampled into the dirt. Durham is a car-centric city in a car-centric state.

Where pedestrians have a will, pedestrians will
find a way. This path on N. Roxboro Road doesn't
offer much protection from speeding cars.

The closed part of this "sidewalk" is the part where
there's not actually any sidewalk. Fayetteville Road.

Fayetteville Road is better endowed with sidewalks
than many other busy streets, albeit with a few 
unfortunate gaps. Here's a miniscule stretch built
solely for cars to drive over.

This sidewalk continues on the other side of the grass-
covered pile of dirt (and probably under it too).

There are no sidewalks on this hill along the freeway,
which makes sense. I shouldn't have been walking
here. Do not try this at home.

6. When people see that you are walking a lot, they recommend books to read and movies watch about people who walk a lot. 

In these long-walk narratives--skimmed from the uppermost layers of the world's millennia-deep collection of wanderer tales--distance-walking is inevitably life-altering. Protagonists walk away from the familiar, the comfortable, the mundane, the dangerous, the horrific, the tragic. And they usually walk directly or meanderingly toward those same things too, in all possible pairings. Distance matters in these stories: an epic is not an epic if you only have to walk across the street to experience it. 

(I'm admittedly not an avid reader, but even I know multiple narratives about walking epic distances. I know a few narratives about walking very short distances--e.g. discovering love in the back yard or up the road. What I'm not aware of are stories about walking a sensible 3-4 miles a day.)

7. You don't need to get in a car to go for a walk in the woods in Durham: we have greenways, rivers, trails, and parks in places both expected and unexpected.

Boardwalk in Indian Trail Park.

Greenway behind Costco.

West Point on the Eno City Park.

8. You don't need to get in a car to see art in Durham: we have abundant visual, sculptural, architectural, and musical art in places both expected and unexpected.

Brontosaurus on the greenway near the Museum
of Life and Science. (But is it art? Walking and
philosophy go hand in hand too.)

Underpass art connecting Westover Park to Northpointe.

Mural in progress on Foster Street.

Duke Chapel. 

Out-of-commission satellite dishes at Duke Arts Annex

Signal box art near Costco.

Duke's Nasher Art Museum.

Durham County Library sculpture.

Minions having a Mardi Gras party on the greenway.

I AM DURHAM, Morris Green Park.

9. The Bull City likes its bovines.

West Club Blvd.

Leon Street apartments.

Downtown alley

Major the Bull, CCB Plaza.

Alley art.

DBAP.

Emerge Ortho.

Magic fairy bullerina (?) at Stadium & Duke.

================

*The little library on Geer Street is adorned with names and images referring Black Wall Street and other Black history in Durham. Links below provide a brief who's who:

1. 
C.C. Spaulding: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Clinton_Spaulding 
Elsie Campbell: https://beta.prx.org/series/31000 

Viola Turner: https://www.facebook.com/DiscoverDurhamNC/posts/viola-turner-began-her-career-at-the-nc-mutual-life-insurance-company-in-1920-as/10156115894253959/ 

JB Stradford: http://blackwallstreet.org/jbstradford 

Aaron M. Moore: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_McDuffie_Moore 

Maggie Lena Walker: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maggie_L._Walker 

Selena Warren Wheeler: http://www.opendurham.org/people/wheeler-selena-warren 

William Reuben Pettiford: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_R._Pettiford 

Bessie Whitted: https://www.facebook.com/BrownGirlCollective/photos/the-north-carolina-mutual-quintet-led-by-bessie-whitted-last-on-the-right-1930s-/10152718115589593/ 

Julia Taylor: https://www.blackenterprise.com/womenofpowersummit/julia-taylor/ 

Jackson Ward: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson_Ward 

O.W. Gurley: http://blackwallstreet.org/owgurley 

Rosa Johnson: https://beta.prx.org/series/31000 

2.

Hayti Heritage Center is on Fayetteville Road. https://hayti.org/ 

I-147 cut right through the Hayti neighborhood in the 1960s in the name of "urban renewal." https://www.bullcity150.org/uneven_ground/dismantling_hayti/ 

3. 

Durham Black Wall Street: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Wall_Street_(Durham,_North_Carolina) 

The image is based on the second photo here: http://www.opendurham.org/buildings/105-107-w-parrish-st

4. 

The top of the little library depicts Shakanah China, who was 13 when she was killed in a drive-by shooting in Durham. 

https://www.leanoraminai.com/blog/tag/Shakanah+China 

https://www.wral.com/family-relieved-by-arrests.../11117012/ 

https://www.wral.com/man-pleads-guilty-in-drive.../15166684/

Backpacking Mount Rogers again

Last weekend, my friend N and I had planned to go on a backpacking adventure in western North Carolina, but the remnants of hurricane Sally pushed us north into Virginia instead. Thus I hiked my second loop of the summer around Mount Rogers in the Lewis Fork Wilderness Area. 

Things I learned: spontaneously purchasing that 20oF-rated Marmot sleeping bag the day before we headed out was a smart move; a one-person bivy (or as E calls it, "coffin tent") that you can't sit up inside is not ideal when you wake up to subfreezing temps and frozen condensation on your rain fly; and the unblazed Cliffside Trail is just as beautiful as the Pine Trail and the Crest Trail. And word to the wise: starting the loop on a Saturday is a good idea only if you like sharing the most congested parts of the trail with a hundred or so other people. We were glad we chose to camp a mile or two past Rhododendron Gap.

Mathemalchemy

This past February, I joined a group of artists, mathematicians, and mathematician-artists collaborating on a math-art installation with layer upon layer upon layer of mathematical and artistic thought, narrative, punning, and play. For me, during this summer of covid, it's been an opportunity both to get to know a bunch of really interesting, dedicated, talented, creative people and to explore new objets d'clay. I've prototyped herons and hagfish-inspired Fibonacci sea serpents for a Knotical scene, tortoise shells decorated with pentagonal and heptagonal tilings of the hyperbolic plane, and clay heads for an industrious feline baker of tessellating cookies, with more creatures coming soon. These seeds are stimulating adventures for me outside of the project too. The first heron prototypes, for example, flew off to the Sculpture in the Garden show at the North Carolina Botanical Garden, and successive generations rounded out a recent Claymakers Zoom class on wheel-thrown and altered birds and beasts.

The math-art project now has a website--mathemalchemy.org--and released a teaser trailer this past week. Check it out! 

Penguins meet Fibonacci serpent

Tessellating shell for Tess the tortoise

First batch of heads that looked more feline than
kangarooine or chipmunkine. Still working on it...

Juvenile wheel-thrown heron; the adults are taller and have metal legs.

Third time's the charm

In 2009, we returned from a sabbatical semester in Germany to find that almost all of our houseplants had perished. I put out a plea for cuttings on our neighborhood email list, and a neighbor responded. Among her gifts was an epiphyllum leaf. 

Over the next several years, the single leaf grew into an enormous scraggly plant. During the winter, it perches like a vulture atop a wardrobe in our living room. In the summer, it hangs out outside on the porch.

Two summers ago, I finally learned it likes half shade/half sun. It rewarded me by producing a single flower. Unfortunately, I didn't notice the flower until the morning after it had bloomed. Epiphyllum--also known as night-blooming cereus--blooms at night, and the flowers wilt at dawn. I vowed to pay more attention the next summer.

This summer, it rewarded me again by producing a single flower, and dagnabbit if I didn't notice the flower until the morning after it had bloomed. I vowed to pay more attention next summer.

And then, a few weeks after the second annual miss, we had a hit. The plant put out a second bud. I checked it every few days, then daily, then twice daily, and then it bloomed. We now understand why people host bloom-watching parties.

August 31

September 6

September 8

September 9

September 11

September 11

E made a time-lapse video

E's video captures ~8:30pm - midnight in 9 seconds:

 

The morning after

Quarantine Lunchbox (2020)

Backyard State U had a covid trainwreck last month. Who could have imagined that behavioral scientists and epidemiologists actually know what they're talking about?

E heeded the poem, but some of his bright-eyed bushy-tailed first-year suite-mates did not. (And who can blame them, really? We know that kids do all sorts of risky stuff when they're away from home for the first time.) A suite-mate tested positive for covid. 

Thus E spent two full weeks in quarantine, as required by BSU's overwhelmed Student Housing, waiting to find out if he had covid too. He tested negative ten days in, so was either barely symptomatic early on or never had it. As soon as E was sprung from confinement, S helped him move out of his quarantine dorm and then out of his regular dorm. E might not be on campus anymore, but hoo boy, he's certainly getting an education this year.

While hunkered down, E received two meals each day, delivered at the same time by Dining Services, providing him with a grand total of 14 memorable hummus-veggie wrap lunches and 14 functional dinners. E, a budding environmental engineer, set to work redeploying the cardstock lunch containers. He prototyped a lot of paper airplanes, but he also made some art. If you want to know what 14 days in quarantine looks like, check out the exhibit below.

E

Quarantine Lunchbox

2020

Cardstock boxes, glue, metal tin

9.5" x 3.75" x 2.25"

Private collection

Poem

WTF Were the Grown-Ups Thinking?: 

A Poem for College Undergraduates Nationwide 

Dear young adults, please do us proud 

Of your budding social graces 

As now you move, a giant crowd, 

Back to your campus places. 

Please use your smarts, do as you vowed: 

Stand apart at least six paces, 

And t’ prevent a covid aerosol cloud, 

Wear masks upon your faces. 

Be brave, stand up, don’t just stand by 

When peers flout common sense. 

Your health’s at risk—and so is mine— 

the dangers are immense. 

Say “friends, by now we all know why 

Masks are the best defense 

Against th' contagious coronavi- 

Rus. Don, or go I hence.” 

If peers reply, "We've none to wear 

Until our laundry’s done," 

Now's the time to show you care 

By offering to give them some 

From your stash—you're so prepared 

This problem to overcome! 

But if “Ne'er!” they shout, then do not err: 

Swiftly from them run. 

I know you’re young, I know you’re strong, 

I know you're kind and wise. 

Most of you know right from wrong, 

Yet still I agonize. 

Choosing well th’semester long 

Will be, ‘tis no surprise, 

A challenge. Thus I beg you, throng: 

Mask! Distance! Sanitize!