By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO—I’m supposed to take walks at least three times a week and more often if I knew what was good for me, I’m told by both my wife and my doctor.
Sometimes, I spend so much time in front of my computer, I forget.
But, when I do force myself up from my chair and away from the keyboard, I have four routes I can choose to perambulate. Each has its attractions.
Going around the neighborhood is the shortest in distance, but as I live in a hilly area, it is the route most likely to produce huffing and puffing –cardiovascular exercise, as the enthusiasts call it. The most enjoyable part of it is that I can see what my neighbor, the recycling sculptor, has been up to. I have been captivated by his work ever since I first saw the sculpture in his front yard of Sampson pulling down the pillars of the Philistine temple. The larger-than-life sculpture is made from scrap metals, and it’s a very fanciful interpretation of the Bible story. Another favorite, hanging from a wall of his garage, is of a little girl who seems to have been lifted to the sky by a balloon on a string. This neighborhood exercise route sometimes admits to cheating, as neighbors occasionally greet me and we get into conversations.
Another option is going to the nearby Mission Trails Regional Park. There are many different dirt paths through this wilderness on the outskirts of the City of San Diego, but the most popular route is one on pavement leading from the Visitors Center to beyond Old Padre Dam, a distance of about two miles. This route allows one to interpret rock formations in a manner similar to cloud-gazing. Doesn’t that one look like a large snake, and isn’t that collection of rocks similar to a Bedouin village? If I squint at that rock formation jutting out of the side of the hill, it looks like Moses carrying the tablets down from Mount Sinai, and in contrast , those interestingly patterned boulders look like worlds about to be flung to the ends of the universe by some Big Bang.
A third option is Lake Murray, which has an entire coterie of regulars, walking, skating, running and bike riding on the paved path around its shores. You catch snatches of conversations as people go by—a man tells another, “it’s times like these that it makes sense to invest in ….” and a woman, tells her friend, “I know it doesn’t make any sense to see him again, but ….” Some women I judge to be members of a Sisterhood say, “It’s always the same women doing the cooking; we’ve got to get some younger members….” It’s tempting for us eavesdroppers to suddenly “realize” that it’s time to retie our shoes, but that would be defeating the purpose of exercise.
The fourth option, and my favorite, is a walk around the lakes in the neighboring City of Santee. The route is flat and the lakes are filled with such water fowl as herons, egrets, mud hens (also called “coots”), cormorants, and several species of ducks. I never fail to be thrilled as the ducks go skittering across the water, or when a cormorant suddenly emerges from a dive, and looks for all the world, like the periscope of an Israeli submarine, peering across the waters at some Arab coastline.
On all of these walking routes, one passes people going in the opposite direction – and one can count on hearing a cheerful “Good Morning” or “Good Afternoon” from someone. As exercise is the goal of all of us—except the fishermen and fisherwomen—we don’t stop, of course, to find out just how good a morning or afternoon it is.
Because I am a social person, who always enjoys hearing or finding a story, I much prefer walking with a companion to walking alone. Under such circumstances, my mind can take in information, without my feet breaking stride.
This also helps overcome my wife’s doubts about whether I can do two things at once.
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted at donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com